Healthy Living and Weight Management
This is a lifestyle I'm striving to adopt to improve my health. This is a primarily preventive and holistic approach I've gathered from lots of research (and more of my mom's research) and I tested most of the below claims with personal experience. Prevent illness instead of dealing with trying to cure it. Most of the common chronic illnesses today are completely or almost completely preventable if only we were willing to change our lifestyles. When one thing goes wrong in your body, it affects other things. A physical disorder can cause a psychological symptom and vice versa. When you naturally fix one thing in your body it should positively affect the healing of your other ailments. Reducing stress can improve your asthma for example. With this approach in mind and with motivated dedication it is possible to find holistic healing of mind, body and soul.
Many young, strong, healthy people have terrible habits, such as eating junk or processed food all day long, drinking sodas instead of water and herbal teas, binging on drugs like coffee, tobacco, alcohol and others, not sleeping sufficiently or regularly, etc. They may not suffer much right now, but if they continue to keep up their bad habits for a prolonged time, they will start suffering seriously in their middle age. I think it is possible to undo the damage of a few crazy college years but our permanent lifestyles should be much health conscious if we want to live and age healthily and most importantly if we want to bear healthy children.
The people who will likely benefit the most from the below suggestions are those who suffer from chronic diseases like myself and pregnant women or women preparing for pregnancy. It's most important to protect the most vulnerable fetus from environmental and dietary offenses.
FOR MORE DETAIL AND TIPS ON DIET, EXERCISE, SLEEP, SUN EXPOSURE, MEDITATION AND DAILY SUPPLEMENTS SCROLL DOWN:
Acupuncture: asthma, chronic pain, weight loss, improve functionality and sensation of damaged or dead nerves, as well as a number of other conditions
Bach Flowers: using a few times a day over the course of months helps regulate sleep patterns, find your inner balance in personality and behavior, reduces irritability, aggression, avoidance type unwanted tendencies. RESCUE Remedy is a special blend of Dr Bach and is for emergency or stressful situations. The stress can be physical like a move out of town or a surgery or emotional. Not only is it safe to use in pets, Rescue is recommended to help your pets relieve from stressful situations and other Bach flower mixes are good to mellow your pets' unwanted behavior patterns such as aggression, being antisocial, overly curious or scared, etc. Pets and children tend to respond faster than adults. Also helps with ADD, attention, focus related symptoms in children.
Castor Oil: helps with nerve regeneration. Great moisturizer for hardened skin such as feet calluses and also good for athlete's foot. This oil is also a good nourishment for the hair and is said to be useful in getting rid of block dots on your skin. Cat alert: they may try to lick it off your feet, consider wearing socks.
Netipot with salt water: use a few times a week as needed to improve and keep your sinusitis under control
Colloidal Silver: antiseptic for wounds, antibiotics for a wide variety of microbes. especially good for UTI if drank as liquid and for skin burns topically as a cream. safe&effective in pets, watch digested dosage for pets and humans for max effect without side effects. Colloidal silver is easy to make at home and much cheaper if you need large amounts; all you need is a little and simple machine that works with a battery and some silver sticks to be soaked in salt water while attached to the machine.
Aloe Vera gel: topical for small wounds, burns.
Saint John's Wort: use daily as a supplement for mild depression but not major depression.
TENS: electronic nerve stimulation helps with neuropathic pain
EMS (electronic muscle stimulation) and physical therapy exercises: helps prevent muscle atrophy due to nerve damage, reduce pain in the long run and increase motion range & muscle flexibility & strength, it can also help with fat loss, body toning, and reducing appetite.
Home&Office cleaning products: Use biodegradable, compostable, earth and life friendly products in your home to reduce allergic and carcinogenic reactions their inhaled fumes may cause in the people, pets and especially children of your household. skin contact with them is also undesirable. (you think your kid keeps getting sick because the window was open or she wasn't wearing socks? think again. what really weakens the immune system? it's what you eat, what you breath and what you touch.) If you can find toilet paper and paper towel made of hemp paper instead of tree paper prefer that for the sake of our planet's lungs. So far the only company I found that makes hemp toilet paper is Forevergreen/Versativa and they're expensive-I was able to negotiate $50/24 rolls. Let's advocate the legal and abundant growing of industrial hemp plants to stop killing our trees for the making of furniture, housing and papers (as well as numerous other products) and so hemp prices can go down. Be mindful of using air freshener type sprays around people with asthma, allergies or around children and small pets like cats. What is a small amount for us can be overwhelming for our furry or little family members.
Personal hygiene: again avoid human-made chemicals, heavy metals. use naturally derived toothpaste, shampoo, creams, soaps, mouthwash etc. Extra virgin olive oil, organic coconut oil, vitamin E are excellent moisturizers for both skin and hair. They are also excellent for cats' skin and coat when fed by mouth or soaked on their paws so they would slowly lick it (especially coconut oil). Many pets love it so much they will beg for it every day and lick it clean off your fingers. Avoid deodorants containing aluminum compounds, salt rocks are great natural deodorants that don't contain heavy metals. Avoid over heating and over processing your hair to reduce damage to your hair over time. Use all natural cotton female hygiene products, if possible organic, to protect the natural pH and bacteria of the vaginal area and prevent infections, BV, etc. Don't bake your skin and your eyes in the sun or in solariums to avoid skin cancer.
Clothing: avoid polyester type materials that don't allow your skin to breath. Use products made of more natural materials such as hemp, cotton, linen, if possible organic. Make this choice especially for underclothes and clothes that are closer to your skin. Avoid clothing that's much too tight. High heels should be reserved for occasion. Make up should be reserved for occasion or for daily usage, organic natural products need to be preferred to avoid skin damage in the long term.
Cannabis: to avoid any unwanted side effects do not smoke. smoking any herb (whether it's tobacco, catnip or mint) is bad for you, although the bronchial dilation, anti-inflammatory and other qualities of cannabis will counteract some of this damage making it much less harmful than smoking tobacco. Use the ground bud with a vaporizer or as cannabis oil or marijuana tea or edibles or topical creams. Apparently better than all these methods is raw consumption by way of juicing its leaves (rather than its buds/flowers) which often requires that you grow your own plants, some doctors suggest in such raw form with no psychoactive effect it's a dietary essential in that it improves the immune system and many other functions of the body and is an excellent preventive of cancer and numerous chronic illnesses. Daily or frequent usage of appropriate medical strains helps with treatment or symptom control of: cancer, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, Crohn's disease, chronic pain, neuropathy, radiculopathy, spinal pain, depression, anxiety, insomnia, sleep difficulties, epilepsy, seizures in general, asthma, sinusitis, some digestive regulation, headache, migraine, loss of appetite, nausea, etc. and improves health in general. It can also help weight loss by increasing your metabolism and improving your digestion if you can regulate the munchies (hunger) side effect. A couple of tips would be to avoid strains that particularly increase appetite, cheat yourself by filling your stomach with water, tea and other low calorie options or having your medication time before meals; it also helps to eliminate junk food or other high carb/sugar/bad fat foods from your environment completely, these tips would also help with weight loss in general. Sativa strains can also increase focus, creativity, energy and help with ADD/ADHD. Make sure you know which strain to get for which condition for optimal help. Buy medical cannabis from dispensaries or grow your own if possible, so you know you're buying/using reliable herb not laced with any other substance. For day time usage, prefer energy increasing Sativa strains or low THC high CBD strains grown for purely medical purposes, which help with pain but don't have significant cerebral effects such as sleepiness or psychoactive. It seems many pets are fond of the cannabis bud's vapor (or the bud itself, pet owners commonly complain about their pets stealing their buds) but they especially love eating the leaves and pet owners claim their pets found relief for conditions such as arthritis rheumatism from daily consumption. If you find a pet having eaten cannabis buds (not leaves), a small amount should be totally harmless and a larger amount requires a call to the vet just to be on the safe side. Either way there is no known quantity that can kill a dog, even attempts to kill a dog with massive amounts injected intravenously have been reported failed.
http://www.google.com/patents/US6630507 : in 2001 the US government filed for and now holds a patent on marijuana because they recognized the medicinal uses of marijuana
http://kaabi.hubpages.com/hub/Hemp-Oil-Cancer-Cure
list of scientific studies done on cannabis:
http://www.letfreedomgrow.com/cmu/GrannysList-Jan2011.pdf
Cannabis has been used medicinally, recreationally, for a boost of health (soma tea) and for religious spiritual purposes for thousands of years by medicine men, shamans and some Sufis.
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This is a lifestyle I'm striving to adopt to improve my health. This is a primarily preventive and holistic approach I've gathered from lots of research (and more of my mom's research) and I tested most of the below claims with personal experience. Prevent illness instead of dealing with trying to cure it. Most of the common chronic illnesses today are completely or almost completely preventable if only we were willing to change our lifestyles. When one thing goes wrong in your body, it affects other things. A physical disorder can cause a psychological symptom and vice versa. When you naturally fix one thing in your body it should positively affect the healing of your other ailments. Reducing stress can improve your asthma for example. With this approach in mind and with motivated dedication it is possible to find holistic healing of mind, body and soul.
Many young, strong, healthy people have terrible habits, such as eating junk or processed food all day long, drinking sodas instead of water and herbal teas, binging on drugs like coffee, tobacco, alcohol and others, not sleeping sufficiently or regularly, etc. They may not suffer much right now, but if they continue to keep up their bad habits for a prolonged time, they will start suffering seriously in their middle age. I think it is possible to undo the damage of a few crazy college years but our permanent lifestyles should be much health conscious if we want to live and age healthily and most importantly if we want to bear healthy children.
The people who will likely benefit the most from the below suggestions are those who suffer from chronic diseases like myself and pregnant women or women preparing for pregnancy. It's most important to protect the most vulnerable fetus from environmental and dietary offenses.
Diet:First, here are some recipes I recommend & enjoy: http://pan-cck.blogspot.com/2013/02/paleo-recipes.html
Diet is what mostly determines your weight/fat as well as your general health. If you follow these suggestions you will almost definitely approach your ideal weight over time. Here is the summary: no grain, no sugar, no chemical/processed junk food imitation crap, even if it is called "health food" or "diet drink" (often those are even worse). Say no to the lies and cheating and robbing of industrial capitalism and yes to the Paleo diet. The way hunter gatherer people eat, the way every one of our ancestors ate for millions of years until the agricultural revolution less than 10,000 years ago.
I was shocked to find out that even archaeological evidence suggests that right after the agricultural revolution started in ancient Egypt and mass production, processing and consumption of grains replaced vegetables, fruits and meat in people's diets, coupled with the hard working conditions of slavery (which is the majority of the society) that the agricultural revolution itself brought about, life span was quickly reduced to about an average of 30 years and a sudden epidemic of heart, blood pressure problems, overweight and diabetes emerged. These chronic debilitating and deadly conditions are simply not found in hunter gatherer populations. Research of modern hunter gatherer populations also agree with this archaeological evidence. Our ancestors who survived in the wild until the last small percentage of the span of human history were typically very strong, fit and healthy. They survived the bitterest colds and deserts, the forest and the wild animals and lived much longer than 30 years (except for Neanderthal males in Europe who had the habit of fighting very large game at close distance in the Ice Age and dying of severe injury). They hunted meat or fish, they gathered vegetables, fruits, and nuts and occasionally they stole honey from the bees, but they were pretty much never seen eating bird food, i.e. grains. Humans are omnivorous mammals, not birds. This also applies for your carnivorous pets, especially cats. (Dogs are carnivorous too, they're not omnivorous.) Avoid feeding your carnivorous pets dry food (especially cats due to their low thirst drive-they're desert animals) and go grain-free, starch free and soy free, i.e. no corn, rice, wheat, gluten, tapioca, potatoes, peas, check the % of meat (ideally >95%) to ensure even if there are starches they are in small percentages. Try feeding your pets raw meat for cats and dogs with adequate supplements, or even better, live or frozen whole animal feeders such as mice, quail, rats, rabbit, etc (usually sold for zoo animals or snakes). Canned food beats dry food by far. With the explosion of the profit-driven pet food industry, unfortunately instances of diabetes, obesity and UTI have sky-rocketed among pets. For more on pet care: http://pan-cck.blogspot.com/2013/03/caring-for-pets.html
What you should NOT eat: Avoid chemicals like cancer, in fact they cause cancer. Avoid over processed foods, additives, colorings, pharmaceutical chemical medications as much as you feasibly can. Check the ingredient lists of what you eat and drink, typically the lesser the number of ingredients the better, the more words you don't recognize or know are not natural, the worse. Especially avoid aspartame common in diet foods, it's actually worse than sugar. Avoid high fructose corn syrup to help prevent diabetes.
Avoid all cereals and added sugars, this means: no bread, rice, pasta, couscous, bulghur, any product like cakes or pastries baked with wheat, corn or other cereal flours, anything with sugar added in such as cookies, candy, chocolate, etc are all off the list.
Avoid bad fats: animal fat from animals raised in modern farms, vegetable oil, any butter substitute, margarine type fake oils. It's also good to avoid cow's milk as many people are intolerant of it without knowing it, they will frequently suffer from digestive issues.
Avoid or reduce your dried legumes intake (including peanuts). However, fresh green beans and peas are OK occasionally.
You should also avoid or at least limit potatoes, especially white potatoes; sweet potatoes and yams and other starchy tubers are fine in smaller amounts.
Bad carb/sugars and bad fats are the primary factor responsible for many ailments such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, blood pressure problems, etc.
What should you eat then?
Primarily and daily--in copious amounts: good carbs, i.e. vegetables (more of the low carb ones such as leafy salad, peppers, asparagus, cucumbers, white cabbage, etc and less of those high in sugar such as yams, sweet potatoes) and good proteins (wild or grass-fed meat dried or cooked from raw, mushrooms, eggs.)
Secondarily and daily but in smaller amounts: fruits, berries, nuts, good fats, seeds, spices, seasalt or rocksalt
Tertiarily, once or twice a week or less: raw (unpasteurized) sheep or goat milk and milk products (cheese, yogurt), dark chocolate, raw honey, organic pure maple syrup, optionally in small amounts pseudocereals such as quinoa.
What you should drink: 2-3 liters (more than half a gallon) of water daily. 1-2ce a week you can drink raw milk, prefer goat/sheep milk. Drink herbal teas for many benefits. Ayran (petit lait, kafir, yogurt drink) is good with low salt if made of raw milk. In general, chose sea, rock or mineral salt crystals over regular salt. Avoid drinks with sugar or sugar substitutes, sodas, cokes, diet or regular. Reduce or eliminate your black tea and coffee intake, especially eliminate the added sugar. If you must sweeten, choose honey/lemon juice. Minimize fruit juice for fat loss, eat whole fruits instead.
Good fats: eggs, avocado, raw nut butters, organic virgin coconut oil and grass-fed butter (for cooking and baking), extra virgin olive oil (for cold dishes only), fish oil, tahini (sesame paste).
Meats in order of least fat to most fat: fish, turkey, venison and other game, chicken, pork, beef, lamb. For red meat prefer game meat to beef and if not, use low fat ground or cut beef (with the fat trimmed). Prefer grass fed (instead of grain fed or worse is when they're hormone fed). Eat less lamb, beef and more fish, grass-fed (pasture raised) turkey and chicken, especially fish. Fish is a super food and fish oil is super healthy and it's high in Omega 3. Make sure if not all of your food, especially your animal products (meat, eggs, dairy) are organic and if possible pasture raised (Co-ops who sell local meat may be more affordable than some brand name health food store). For fish, go wild caught, but beware high mercury in many types of fish especially if you're pregnant, you may consider checking what see/ocean the fish comes from, some places may be safer than others. (I need to research this more myself.)
Good cereal-substitutes: Quinoa is a pseudocereal which is similar to bulgur or couscous, it's lower in carb, higher in protein and gluten free so you're not likely to be intolerant of these like many people are intolerant of wheat. For 100% Paleo, you may want to keep your pseudocereal intake less than 3% of your diet.
For healthier versions of traditional dishes, including pastry and deserts, you can substitute flour with the flour of any pseudocereal or sweet potatoes or coconut or almonds. You can even experiment with recipes such as pizza crusts made of cauliflower. Substitute sugar with fruits, fruit molasses, raw wild-caught honey, maple syrup or stevia, substitute bad fats with good fats and instead of cow milk use raw goat/sheep milk. Fruits and fruit molasses (pekmez) are better than fruit juice, fruit juice can become fattening over time due its high sugar concentration in liquid form which makes it faster for the body to absorb it and as a result it can disturb your insulin levels. If possible look for molasses prepared with natural methods under sunlight instead of chemically prepared ones. Fruit molasses should be eaten less often than raw fruits.
http://www.beyonddiet.com/Landing (gives some more of the logic behind the above suggestions)
Gluten "glues" fat on your waistline, it's a glue protein found in most grains. Avoid gluten like the plague for weight management and a number of other ailments.
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/welcome-to-marks-daily-apple/
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/primal-blueprint-101/#axzz2PEqhkfPG (gives all around diet, exercise, sleep etc solutions from a Primal Paleo point of view)
This gluten (and optionally lactose) free diet with the below listed supplements also help the symptoms of many cases of depression, asthma, diabetes and autism spectrum disorders. If you can't do anything else from this diet, eliminate gluten from your diet and drink 2-3 liters of water a day and you will already observe a significant difference. This is not an all or nothing approach, the more changes you make to your lifestyle the more benefits you will get, no matter what your age or health condition.
To lose weight faster safely, if you're in a hurry for beach season, your wedding or if you're simply too impatient to fit into your skinny pants again, in addition to above limitations, avoid or seriously limit the foods high in sugar such as fruits, yogurt, milk (cheese and butter are low in sugar, they're fine) and honey as well as those high in carbs such as high carb vegetables (zucchini, sweet potatoes, squash, etc), and quinoa until you reach your desired goal. Eat good protein foods and low carb vegetables and salad leaves in copious amounts such that you're sufficiently satiated. Snack on small amounts of nuts or nut butters for variety. This diet never requires you to go around hungry or to cut on your good fat, in fact eating too little good fat or too little in general can lower your metabolism and is not optimal for losing your fat. Important so I repeat: Do NOT go around hungry, do NOT cut on your good fats. Eat generously of the right kinds of food and don't feel guilty about it. This diet, whether you're losing weight or preserving your ideal weight, never dictates to eat tiny quantities, in fact eating large quantities of salad everyday will make you feel full with low calories and has many healthy benefits. You are encouraged to eat to your fill which helps keep you motivated and loyal to the diet instead of being constantly tempted to cheat or quit.
If you're obese, it should take less than a couple years for you to become a slim on the skinnier side normal weighted person (been there, done that story below) with this method.
Once you reach your desired weight and measurement goal, slowly in stages introduce all other higher-carb vegetables, than in smaller quantities berries and fruits, then yogurt and milk, then optionally quinoa and finally you can start introducing god-made sweets like honey and pure maple syrup. During the process make sure to monitor your weight and size at intervals to make sure you are preserving your desired weight range and make adjustments to restrict or expand the variety of foods in your diet accordingly.
Important tips: The key is to know what to eat more and what to eat less and what to avoid as well as when to eat. Go for water and tea to cut your late night temptations and if that doesn't work eat salad or a little bit of nut butter, more tips to deal with temptation below. If you slip and completely blow the diet for a day or even a week, pretend this never happened and move on where you left off, you may have slowed or undone the process a bit, but it will continue to work.
It helps to occasionally skip meals or put meals closer together so you're going hungry for a longer portion of the day. It also helps to eat less some days and more some days to increase your leptin (a hormone which has a significant role in fat burn) sensitivity.
It is especially important that you at least take daily probiotics and multivitamins, especially if you're doing the "lose weight fast" diet, since it limits many healthy food groups, in order to avoid any possible unwanted side effects. In addition, to ensure you're getting sufficient nutrients, I highly recommend to those who can afford it to prefer organic raw unprocessed or minimally processed foods, grass-fed or wild meat and fowl, eggs, local produce and local farm or hunters' meat, etc. For those on a budget, here is a friend's page on which fruits and vegetables to prefer organic:
http://immydr.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/which-fruitsvegetables-must-be-consumed-organic/
How to deal with plateaus: They're a normal part of weight loss. Your body needs to settle into your new weight and your skin needs to shrink nicely so that you're not doing yo-yo, gaining back all the weight as soon as you reach your goal which can also leave marks on your skin. Sometimes when you see yourself shedding lbs nicely you think you deserve a treat and a treat becomes a daily treat and so on. Or sometimes you make a modification to your diet. Or you realize you have been binging on an entire bottle of nut butter every sitting. Or you've simply been eating the same meals over and over. Whatever the reason of the plateau or regressing period, what I found helps is this: First you must weigh yourself or calculate your body fat percentage at least once a week or month so you can identify a plateau. (When using the scale keep in mind you are not just trying to lose weight, you're trying to add on to your muscle and lose your fat; however if you're also taking your size measurements and keeping to a low-carb, high-protein diet, you can pretty much be sure what is coming off is fat and not muscle.) I'm keeping a weight loss chart and it's a good idea to track your weight loss and it feels nice when you see the excel graph going down :) Once you know you're in a plateau, change your diet. Reduce the "secondarily" and "tertiarily" lists foods a bit more strictly and replace them with more of the "primarily" foods. Try a different vegetable (for ex: asparagus instead of peppers) or a different recipe, different meals. Try more fish than other meats. Try a secondary method such as EMS (explained below) or exercise or adding supplements (also below) to your diet. Try a few of the things suggested here until you can kick-start the weight loss again. I've definitely had my plateaus and even regressions which can be a bit motivation killer, but with these methods I've been able to snap out of each of these periods and continue the overall weight loss trend. Tell yourself even after you reach the normal weight zone (by BMI standards) you can keep going and shed those last 10-20 lbs.
http://www.halls.md/body-mass-index/bmi.htm About the BMI, I'm of average height and have a fairly normal body type so the BMI is a pretty accurate guide for me but if you're unusually tall, short, muscular, large breasts for women, etc your BMI results can be less or more misleading. You may instead want to measure your body size or do body fat % tests or just check which size clothes you're fitting in. For the clothes size method, beware different companies use different size guidelines. For most women or healthy people who don't care to be muscular, but who want to be satisfied with their looks, our super ideal weight tends to be 5-10 lbs above the limit between underweight and normal (A BMI of 20-22 for women and a BMI 23-25 for men). A BMI of 17-22 tends to have longer life expectancy, a BMI of 17-25 is considered normal weight. Muscle weighs more than fat and if you weigh a lot because you're muscular and not fat, good for you. My point is: when we say weight loss, it's actually misleading, we should be calling it fat loss instead. Muscles and protein are good and needn't be and shouldn't be lost. It's important for weight losing people to monitor whether they're losing fat or muscle, while the former is good for your health, the latter isn't. In fact the more naturally acquired muscle you have, the stronger and fitter you will be. I just personally think too much of it doesn't look good on the feminine body.
More tips to deal with discouraging scale results:
When losing weight it may be necessary at times to be patient and persevere even though you may not see much change on the scale for perhaps months at a time (this is more likely to happen as you're approaching your goal and your BMI is in the normal range). You may though, notice other changes such as your body shape, meaning you may be losing more inches around the waist. this is a good thing. Our Creator is retayloring our skin to fit nicely onto our now smaller bodies and over a longer time the skin is fitted more beautifully, hopefully without stretch marks. With sufficient dedication to not losing hoping and straying, you should eventually start seeing more changes on the scale. One thing to keep in mind is that if you have a constipation problem, that's something you need to pray and solve in order to effectively eliminate your fat and swelling, especially around the abdomen. Avoiding grains, potatoes, bananas, if you're intolerant, dairy too, eating lots of vegetables and taking supplements such as chia seeds and black seed oil (fat and fiber) may be a good prayer method. You can also consider taking probiotics, especially if you've taken a lot of antibiotics in the past and also consider an herbal bowel detox program as a last resort. Rarely but definitely not frequently, you can try using natural laxatives such as senna leaf tea (beware it's created powerful). If you go to acupuncture ask for constipation needle points, poke me.
Meal samples and how to deal with cheat temptation:
Eating more raw and less processed food is better, which is good news for those who don't like spending hours in the kitchen preparing complicated dishes every single day, like myself.
For breakfast, eat 2-3 eggs with some type of meat (ground bison meat for ex), cooked in coconut oil or butter, you can also add some vegetables (think onion, peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, mushrooms), raw goat cheese, olives, cucumbers and/or salad to your meal.
Snack on celery, meat, cucumbers, pickles (watch for gluten and additives in pickles), some raw nuts or nut butter or some baby carrots dipped in basil pesto during the day to control hunger attacks. Drink plenty of water throughout the day. Remember, thirst can often be confused with hunger.
A simple large bowl of salad (green leaves, spring onion, radish, red cabbage, cucumbers, tomatoes, feta and olives tossed with olive oil, lemon juice or organic raw apple cider vinegar, salt and b. pepper) with meat (grilled, baked, stir fried in coconut oil or steamed half to one pound spicy fish fillets or skinless chicken breast) on the side is a fast to prepare, delicious dinner.
It's colorful enough that you won't get bored of eating it frequently, it's healthy, it has low calories & carb, it is packed with protein and good nutrients and it is plenty of food to eat to your fill. All the meanwhile shedding your unwanted fat off your body! If you are a lazy big appetite monster like myself, good news, you can exercise as much or as little and eat gigantic amounts and still lose weight. Of course this doesn't mean it is healthy not to exercise.
For instance to this dinner you can add vegetables (mushroom & peppers or asparagus) grilled or stir fried in coconut oil and eat some additive-free nut butter in lieu of dessert to top your dinner.
Still feeling hungry?
Drink one liter (quart) of cinnamon fruit (for ex apple peels) tea to satisfy your sweet tooth without getting any calories and to ensure you truly have no room left to eat anything else :) Not to mention, cinnamon tea is said to help with weight loss.
Do you still feel like you must cheat? Make your dessert from fruits and honey.
Go for some strawberry dipped in shredded coconut.
Or have some blackberries dipped in shredded coconut, almond flour and drizzle raw honey over it.
Freeze some pitted and peeled fruits (berries, bananas, grapes, peaches) in a bag, then put them in the blender with a bit of coconut milk and optionally raw honey and/or cocoa: tada! Here is your delicious, dairy and added sugar-free ice cream you can top with nuts.
Try some tahini (sesame paste) pekmez (grape or mulberry molasses) stir, you'll be surprised how sweet it is and how good a chocolate substitute it is.
Explore other grain and sugar free dessert recipes made with the good cereal, sugar and fat substitutes, have fun experimenting and enjoy the taste of REAL FOOD!
Check out this link for more tasty recipes: http://pan-cck.blogspot.com/2013/02/paleo-recipes.html
Starting the Paleo diet:
If possible start your diet by no longer buying any food that doesn't fit the diet and meanwhile gradually consuming your anti-diet food. Eventually you should have a house free or almost free of anti-diet food. This is a diet (not the "lose faster" diet but the general guidelines) for the whole family, young or old, healthy or sick, pregnant or not. So if all the members of your home are doing this diet together, you're more likely to succeed in it. When you don't have something you're not supposed to eat within arms reach, it becomes easier to bite the bullet and put up with some cravings. This means you should save most of your decisive motivation for when you are buying food or eating out. Then, you can relax at home knowing that everything in your kitchen is OK to eat (although not in equal quantities). To avoid shopping no-no food succesfully, I refrain from stepping in or even looking in the direction of those grocery store isles that have nothing but junk. Typically I find most of what I eat in the meat, dairy, eggs and fresh produce sections. At the checkout, I try to focus on the magazines or on helping them pack my food, so as not to stare in the eye of the chocolates wrapped in "Buy me!" scream. If it were up to me, I would allow grocery stores to keep their junk crap in only a tiny corner in the very back and have them fill the rest of the store with more fresh produce and raw meat. Halas... That would have most likely resulted in a healthier and thinner nation overall, but guess who doesn't care about that. Capitalists who are after money and power, and the government who serves them.
Settling in the diet-good news: your taste palate might have been used to over-processed or junk food but the more you eat real raw food the more you will appreciate its taste and your body will even start craving it. If you decide to dive in this diet with the "lose weight faster" directions like I did, the first few days of your diet change you may experience something vaguely similar to alcohol, coffee or tobacco withdrawal: a lot of us are "addicted" to high carb foods and refined sugar and when you suddenly start depriving your body of sugar you can feel slightly light-headed with heavy sweet cravings for a few days. Once you get over these first few days, essentially your body having done a mini detox, your sweet and junk cravings will significantly reduce or completely disappear. The more you stick to the diet, the more you will find it easier to stick to it as your body and your taste will quickly adapt to this fat loss mode and you will love this way of life more with every pound shed. Eventually you will reach a point where you will never want to put a greasy chip in your mouth or shove some coke or high fructose corn syrup packed soda down your throat.
Is there a need to mention? Avoid tobacco, the smoke of any organic material, alcohol and chemical drugs for improved health and easier weight loss.
Sleeping regularly and sufficiently:Improves general physical and psychological health, helps weight loss. Some recommend that one is asleep between 10pm-12am for optimal rest and avoids sleeping right before sunset and right around sunrise. Being awake before and after sunrise should make you feel more energetic. Siestas are also recommended to rejuvenate your tired body midday. Try the Paleo sleep cycle of going to sleep soon (1-2 hrs) after sunset and waking before sunrise. Try dimming lights and turning off electronics after sunset to make your environment more conducive to sleep.
Exercise/Dancing and Sun exposure: Doing natural movement exercises (such as hiking, trekking, climbing, walking (if you have injured feet like myself try biking as a substitute), swimming) 1/2-1 hour a few times a week helps keep your body firm, toned, improves general physical and psychological health, increases your energy, lung capacity, motivation and vitality. Good for depression, minimally good for weight/fat loss. Try exercising out doors in fresh air and under sunlight (sufficient sun exposure is important for Vitamin D). You can do these slow/moderate exercises as much as you want (at least 3-5 hrs/week). You are also recommended to do 1.5 to 2 hours a week (but not more!) of a mix of cardio (biking up the mountain, swimming fast, running) and weight lifting. You should also sprint every once in a while. Check Mark's website (the guru of Primal) for more info:
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/primal-blueprint-workout-plan-basics/#axzz2PExQUTc5
Meditation/Yoga/Sufi dhikr:Calms body and mind, allows spiritual enlightenment, reduces stress, feeds the soul, relaxes to the point of reducing pain.
Supplements:If you're going to buy supplements, do your research first to choose a good brand. Choose food extract natural vitamins (or rather vitamin complexes) instead of synthetic ones and choose probiotics with effective delivery method and a variety of high count live bacteria strains.
Unfortunately supplements are needed for most people even when they eat according to this healthy plan which includes tons of raw plants. This has a lot to do with the way we have destroyed our environment, first with agriculture, then and mostly with the development of industry. For more info:
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/definitive-guide-to-primal-supplementation/#axzz2PExQUTc5
Probiotics: use daily to improve digestion and immune system by increasing the ratio of good bacteria in the gut while decreasing the ratio of bad bacteria. This is supposed to help a lot with fat loss especially in the midsection. Consider your guts comprise most of your immune system (70-80%).
Multivitamin for wo/men: use daily to improve your physical and psychological health
Omega 3 fish oil: improves brain function, helps reduce depression (use daily to improve your physical and psychological health). use dietary supplement daily. recommended for autism spectrum.
Calcium:
If you're not getting enough calcium consider this daily.
Vitamin D: If you're not under the sun all day along consider this daily.
Vitamin C: colds, flu, improves body's immune system, also helps dry chronic rosacea with topical application and helps it heal faster when it happens. (You can drink 1/2-1 teaspoon a day with water unless you have diarrhea for general improved health)
Flaxseed or Chia seeds: good to sprinkle on your daily salad about half or one tbsp of chia seeds or "fresh ground" (not pre-ground) flaxseed for added Omega 3 & fiber (should help with digestion by the will of the Creator of the Universe).
Black Seed Oil: one teaspoon in the morning before food to improve general health. this is a good medicine for many things.
Naturally caffeine free herbal teas such as cinnamon, lemon peel, flowers and fruits, mint, ginger, rooibos, black pepper, etc-drink 1 liter warm daily (particularly in the morning) for improved digestion and weight loss. Additionally, one should drink 2-3 liters of water (not other liquids) every day (depending on how dry your climate is). It's said that drinking colder water helps weight loss.
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For more tips on home, herbal and alternative healing for a variety of conditions from small cuts to debilitating chronic ailments as well as what to watch out for when you buy and use cleaning products, self hygiene products and clothing, scroll up.
Many young, strong, healthy people have terrible habits, such as eating junk or processed food all day long, drinking sodas instead of water and herbal teas, binging on drugs like coffee, tobacco, alcohol and others, not sleeping sufficiently or regularly, etc. They may not suffer much right now, but if they continue to keep up their bad habits for a prolonged time, they will start suffering seriously in their middle age. I think it is possible to undo the damage of a few crazy college years but our permanent lifestyles should be much health conscious if we want to live and age healthily and most importantly if we want to bear healthy children.
The people who will likely benefit the most from the below suggestions are those who suffer from chronic diseases like myself and pregnant women or women preparing for pregnancy. It's most important to protect the most vulnerable fetus from environmental and dietary offenses.
FOR MORE DETAIL AND TIPS ON DIET, EXERCISE, SLEEP, SUN EXPOSURE, MEDITATION AND DAILY SUPPLEMENTS SCROLL DOWN:
Acupuncture: asthma, chronic pain, weight loss, improve functionality and sensation of damaged or dead nerves, as well as a number of other conditions
Bach Flowers: using a few times a day over the course of months helps regulate sleep patterns, find your inner balance in personality and behavior, reduces irritability, aggression, avoidance type unwanted tendencies. RESCUE Remedy is a special blend of Dr Bach and is for emergency or stressful situations. The stress can be physical like a move out of town or a surgery or emotional. Not only is it safe to use in pets, Rescue is recommended to help your pets relieve from stressful situations and other Bach flower mixes are good to mellow your pets' unwanted behavior patterns such as aggression, being antisocial, overly curious or scared, etc. Pets and children tend to respond faster than adults. Also helps with ADD, attention, focus related symptoms in children.
Castor Oil: helps with nerve regeneration. Great moisturizer for hardened skin such as feet calluses and also good for athlete's foot. This oil is also a good nourishment for the hair and is said to be useful in getting rid of block dots on your skin. Cat alert: they may try to lick it off your feet, consider wearing socks.
Netipot with salt water: use a few times a week as needed to improve and keep your sinusitis under control
Colloidal Silver: antiseptic for wounds, antibiotics for a wide variety of microbes. especially good for UTI if drank as liquid and for skin burns topically as a cream. safe&effective in pets, watch digested dosage for pets and humans for max effect without side effects. Colloidal silver is easy to make at home and much cheaper if you need large amounts; all you need is a little and simple machine that works with a battery and some silver sticks to be soaked in salt water while attached to the machine.
Aloe Vera gel: topical for small wounds, burns.
Saint John's Wort: use daily as a supplement for mild depression but not major depression.
TENS: electronic nerve stimulation helps with neuropathic pain
EMS (electronic muscle stimulation) and physical therapy exercises: helps prevent muscle atrophy due to nerve damage, reduce pain in the long run and increase motion range & muscle flexibility & strength, it can also help with fat loss, body toning, and reducing appetite.
Home&Office cleaning products: Use biodegradable, compostable, earth and life friendly products in your home to reduce allergic and carcinogenic reactions their inhaled fumes may cause in the people, pets and especially children of your household. skin contact with them is also undesirable. (you think your kid keeps getting sick because the window was open or she wasn't wearing socks? think again. what really weakens the immune system? it's what you eat, what you breath and what you touch.) If you can find toilet paper and paper towel made of hemp paper instead of tree paper prefer that for the sake of our planet's lungs. So far the only company I found that makes hemp toilet paper is Forevergreen/Versativa and they're expensive-I was able to negotiate $50/24 rolls. Let's advocate the legal and abundant growing of industrial hemp plants to stop killing our trees for the making of furniture, housing and papers (as well as numerous other products) and so hemp prices can go down. Be mindful of using air freshener type sprays around people with asthma, allergies or around children and small pets like cats. What is a small amount for us can be overwhelming for our furry or little family members.
Personal hygiene: again avoid human-made chemicals, heavy metals. use naturally derived toothpaste, shampoo, creams, soaps, mouthwash etc. Extra virgin olive oil, organic coconut oil, vitamin E are excellent moisturizers for both skin and hair. They are also excellent for cats' skin and coat when fed by mouth or soaked on their paws so they would slowly lick it (especially coconut oil). Many pets love it so much they will beg for it every day and lick it clean off your fingers. Avoid deodorants containing aluminum compounds, salt rocks are great natural deodorants that don't contain heavy metals. Avoid over heating and over processing your hair to reduce damage to your hair over time. Use all natural cotton female hygiene products, if possible organic, to protect the natural pH and bacteria of the vaginal area and prevent infections, BV, etc. Don't bake your skin and your eyes in the sun or in solariums to avoid skin cancer.
Clothing: avoid polyester type materials that don't allow your skin to breath. Use products made of more natural materials such as hemp, cotton, linen, if possible organic. Make this choice especially for underclothes and clothes that are closer to your skin. Avoid clothing that's much too tight. High heels should be reserved for occasion. Make up should be reserved for occasion or for daily usage, organic natural products need to be preferred to avoid skin damage in the long term.
Cannabis: to avoid any unwanted side effects do not smoke. smoking any herb (whether it's tobacco, catnip or mint) is bad for you, although the bronchial dilation, anti-inflammatory and other qualities of cannabis will counteract some of this damage making it much less harmful than smoking tobacco. Use the ground bud with a vaporizer or as cannabis oil or marijuana tea or edibles or topical creams. Apparently better than all these methods is raw consumption by way of juicing its leaves (rather than its buds/flowers) which often requires that you grow your own plants, some doctors suggest in such raw form with no psychoactive effect it's a dietary essential in that it improves the immune system and many other functions of the body and is an excellent preventive of cancer and numerous chronic illnesses. Daily or frequent usage of appropriate medical strains helps with treatment or symptom control of: cancer, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, Crohn's disease, chronic pain, neuropathy, radiculopathy, spinal pain, depression, anxiety, insomnia, sleep difficulties, epilepsy, seizures in general, asthma, sinusitis, some digestive regulation, headache, migraine, loss of appetite, nausea, etc. and improves health in general. It can also help weight loss by increasing your metabolism and improving your digestion if you can regulate the munchies (hunger) side effect. A couple of tips would be to avoid strains that particularly increase appetite, cheat yourself by filling your stomach with water, tea and other low calorie options or having your medication time before meals; it also helps to eliminate junk food or other high carb/sugar/bad fat foods from your environment completely, these tips would also help with weight loss in general. Sativa strains can also increase focus, creativity, energy and help with ADD/ADHD. Make sure you know which strain to get for which condition for optimal help. Buy medical cannabis from dispensaries or grow your own if possible, so you know you're buying/using reliable herb not laced with any other substance. For day time usage, prefer energy increasing Sativa strains or low THC high CBD strains grown for purely medical purposes, which help with pain but don't have significant cerebral effects such as sleepiness or psychoactive. It seems many pets are fond of the cannabis bud's vapor (or the bud itself, pet owners commonly complain about their pets stealing their buds) but they especially love eating the leaves and pet owners claim their pets found relief for conditions such as arthritis rheumatism from daily consumption. If you find a pet having eaten cannabis buds (not leaves), a small amount should be totally harmless and a larger amount requires a call to the vet just to be on the safe side. Either way there is no known quantity that can kill a dog, even attempts to kill a dog with massive amounts injected intravenously have been reported failed.
http://www.google.com/patents/US6630507 : in 2001 the US government filed for and now holds a patent on marijuana because they recognized the medicinal uses of marijuana
http://kaabi.hubpages.com/hub/Hemp-Oil-Cancer-Cure
list of scientific studies done on cannabis:
http://www.letfreedomgrow.com/cmu/GrannysList-Jan2011.pdf
Cannabis has been used medicinally, recreationally, for a boost of health (soma tea) and for religious spiritual purposes for thousands of years by medicine men, shamans and some Sufis.
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This is a lifestyle I'm striving to adopt to improve my health. This is a primarily preventive and holistic approach I've gathered from lots of research (and more of my mom's research) and I tested most of the below claims with personal experience. Prevent illness instead of dealing with trying to cure it. Most of the common chronic illnesses today are completely or almost completely preventable if only we were willing to change our lifestyles. When one thing goes wrong in your body, it affects other things. A physical disorder can cause a psychological symptom and vice versa. When you naturally fix one thing in your body it should positively affect the healing of your other ailments. Reducing stress can improve your asthma for example. With this approach in mind and with motivated dedication it is possible to find holistic healing of mind, body and soul.
Many young, strong, healthy people have terrible habits, such as eating junk or processed food all day long, drinking sodas instead of water and herbal teas, binging on drugs like coffee, tobacco, alcohol and others, not sleeping sufficiently or regularly, etc. They may not suffer much right now, but if they continue to keep up their bad habits for a prolonged time, they will start suffering seriously in their middle age. I think it is possible to undo the damage of a few crazy college years but our permanent lifestyles should be much health conscious if we want to live and age healthily and most importantly if we want to bear healthy children.
The people who will likely benefit the most from the below suggestions are those who suffer from chronic diseases like myself and pregnant women or women preparing for pregnancy. It's most important to protect the most vulnerable fetus from environmental and dietary offenses.
Diet:First, here are some recipes I recommend & enjoy: http://pan-cck.blogspot.com/2013/02/paleo-recipes.html
Diet is what mostly determines your weight/fat as well as your general health. If you follow these suggestions you will almost definitely approach your ideal weight over time. Here is the summary: no grain, no sugar, no chemical/processed junk food imitation crap, even if it is called "health food" or "diet drink" (often those are even worse). Say no to the lies and cheating and robbing of industrial capitalism and yes to the Paleo diet. The way hunter gatherer people eat, the way every one of our ancestors ate for millions of years until the agricultural revolution less than 10,000 years ago.
I was shocked to find out that even archaeological evidence suggests that right after the agricultural revolution started in ancient Egypt and mass production, processing and consumption of grains replaced vegetables, fruits and meat in people's diets, coupled with the hard working conditions of slavery (which is the majority of the society) that the agricultural revolution itself brought about, life span was quickly reduced to about an average of 30 years and a sudden epidemic of heart, blood pressure problems, overweight and diabetes emerged. These chronic debilitating and deadly conditions are simply not found in hunter gatherer populations. Research of modern hunter gatherer populations also agree with this archaeological evidence. Our ancestors who survived in the wild until the last small percentage of the span of human history were typically very strong, fit and healthy. They survived the bitterest colds and deserts, the forest and the wild animals and lived much longer than 30 years (except for Neanderthal males in Europe who had the habit of fighting very large game at close distance in the Ice Age and dying of severe injury). They hunted meat or fish, they gathered vegetables, fruits, and nuts and occasionally they stole honey from the bees, but they were pretty much never seen eating bird food, i.e. grains. Humans are omnivorous mammals, not birds. This also applies for your carnivorous pets, especially cats. (Dogs are carnivorous too, they're not omnivorous.) Avoid feeding your carnivorous pets dry food (especially cats due to their low thirst drive-they're desert animals) and go grain-free, starch free and soy free, i.e. no corn, rice, wheat, gluten, tapioca, potatoes, peas, check the % of meat (ideally >95%) to ensure even if there are starches they are in small percentages. Try feeding your pets raw meat for cats and dogs with adequate supplements, or even better, live or frozen whole animal feeders such as mice, quail, rats, rabbit, etc (usually sold for zoo animals or snakes). Canned food beats dry food by far. With the explosion of the profit-driven pet food industry, unfortunately instances of diabetes, obesity and UTI have sky-rocketed among pets. For more on pet care: http://pan-cck.blogspot.com/2013/03/caring-for-pets.html
What you should NOT eat: Avoid chemicals like cancer, in fact they cause cancer. Avoid over processed foods, additives, colorings, pharmaceutical chemical medications as much as you feasibly can. Check the ingredient lists of what you eat and drink, typically the lesser the number of ingredients the better, the more words you don't recognize or know are not natural, the worse. Especially avoid aspartame common in diet foods, it's actually worse than sugar. Avoid high fructose corn syrup to help prevent diabetes.
Avoid all cereals and added sugars, this means: no bread, rice, pasta, couscous, bulghur, any product like cakes or pastries baked with wheat, corn or other cereal flours, anything with sugar added in such as cookies, candy, chocolate, etc are all off the list.
Avoid bad fats: animal fat from animals raised in modern farms, vegetable oil, any butter substitute, margarine type fake oils. It's also good to avoid cow's milk as many people are intolerant of it without knowing it, they will frequently suffer from digestive issues.
Avoid or reduce your dried legumes intake (including peanuts). However, fresh green beans and peas are OK occasionally.
You should also avoid or at least limit potatoes, especially white potatoes; sweet potatoes and yams and other starchy tubers are fine in smaller amounts.
Bad carb/sugars and bad fats are the primary factor responsible for many ailments such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, blood pressure problems, etc.
What should you eat then?
Primarily and daily--in copious amounts: good carbs, i.e. vegetables (more of the low carb ones such as leafy salad, peppers, asparagus, cucumbers, white cabbage, etc and less of those high in sugar such as yams, sweet potatoes) and good proteins (wild or grass-fed meat dried or cooked from raw, mushrooms, eggs.)
Secondarily and daily but in smaller amounts: fruits, berries, nuts, good fats, seeds, spices, seasalt or rocksalt
Tertiarily, once or twice a week or less: raw (unpasteurized) sheep or goat milk and milk products (cheese, yogurt), dark chocolate, raw honey, organic pure maple syrup, optionally in small amounts pseudocereals such as quinoa.
What you should drink: 2-3 liters (more than half a gallon) of water daily. 1-2ce a week you can drink raw milk, prefer goat/sheep milk. Drink herbal teas for many benefits. Ayran (petit lait, kafir, yogurt drink) is good with low salt if made of raw milk. In general, chose sea, rock or mineral salt crystals over regular salt. Avoid drinks with sugar or sugar substitutes, sodas, cokes, diet or regular. Reduce or eliminate your black tea and coffee intake, especially eliminate the added sugar. If you must sweeten, choose honey/lemon juice. Minimize fruit juice for fat loss, eat whole fruits instead.
Good fats: eggs, avocado, raw nut butters, organic virgin coconut oil and grass-fed butter (for cooking and baking), extra virgin olive oil (for cold dishes only), fish oil, tahini (sesame paste).
Meats in order of least fat to most fat: fish, turkey, venison and other game, chicken, pork, beef, lamb. For red meat prefer game meat to beef and if not, use low fat ground or cut beef (with the fat trimmed). Prefer grass fed (instead of grain fed or worse is when they're hormone fed). Eat less lamb, beef and more fish, grass-fed (pasture raised) turkey and chicken, especially fish. Fish is a super food and fish oil is super healthy and it's high in Omega 3. Make sure if not all of your food, especially your animal products (meat, eggs, dairy) are organic and if possible pasture raised (Co-ops who sell local meat may be more affordable than some brand name health food store). For fish, go wild caught, but beware high mercury in many types of fish especially if you're pregnant, you may consider checking what see/ocean the fish comes from, some places may be safer than others. (I need to research this more myself.)
Good cereal-substitutes: Quinoa is a pseudocereal which is similar to bulgur or couscous, it's lower in carb, higher in protein and gluten free so you're not likely to be intolerant of these like many people are intolerant of wheat. For 100% Paleo, you may want to keep your pseudocereal intake less than 3% of your diet.
For healthier versions of traditional dishes, including pastry and deserts, you can substitute flour with the flour of any pseudocereal or sweet potatoes or coconut or almonds. You can even experiment with recipes such as pizza crusts made of cauliflower. Substitute sugar with fruits, fruit molasses, raw wild-caught honey, maple syrup or stevia, substitute bad fats with good fats and instead of cow milk use raw goat/sheep milk. Fruits and fruit molasses (pekmez) are better than fruit juice, fruit juice can become fattening over time due its high sugar concentration in liquid form which makes it faster for the body to absorb it and as a result it can disturb your insulin levels. If possible look for molasses prepared with natural methods under sunlight instead of chemically prepared ones. Fruit molasses should be eaten less often than raw fruits.
http://www.beyonddiet.com/Landing (gives some more of the logic behind the above suggestions)
Gluten "glues" fat on your waistline, it's a glue protein found in most grains. Avoid gluten like the plague for weight management and a number of other ailments.
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/welcome-to-marks-daily-apple/
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/primal-blueprint-101/#axzz2PEqhkfPG (gives all around diet, exercise, sleep etc solutions from a Primal Paleo point of view)
This gluten (and optionally lactose) free diet with the below listed supplements also help the symptoms of many cases of depression, asthma, diabetes and autism spectrum disorders. If you can't do anything else from this diet, eliminate gluten from your diet and drink 2-3 liters of water a day and you will already observe a significant difference. This is not an all or nothing approach, the more changes you make to your lifestyle the more benefits you will get, no matter what your age or health condition.
To lose weight faster safely, if you're in a hurry for beach season, your wedding or if you're simply too impatient to fit into your skinny pants again, in addition to above limitations, avoid or seriously limit the foods high in sugar such as fruits, yogurt, milk (cheese and butter are low in sugar, they're fine) and honey as well as those high in carbs such as high carb vegetables (zucchini, sweet potatoes, squash, etc), and quinoa until you reach your desired goal. Eat good protein foods and low carb vegetables and salad leaves in copious amounts such that you're sufficiently satiated. Snack on small amounts of nuts or nut butters for variety. This diet never requires you to go around hungry or to cut on your good fat, in fact eating too little good fat or too little in general can lower your metabolism and is not optimal for losing your fat. Important so I repeat: Do NOT go around hungry, do NOT cut on your good fats. Eat generously of the right kinds of food and don't feel guilty about it. This diet, whether you're losing weight or preserving your ideal weight, never dictates to eat tiny quantities, in fact eating large quantities of salad everyday will make you feel full with low calories and has many healthy benefits. You are encouraged to eat to your fill which helps keep you motivated and loyal to the diet instead of being constantly tempted to cheat or quit.
If you're obese, it should take less than a couple years for you to become a slim on the skinnier side normal weighted person (been there, done that story below) with this method.
Once you reach your desired weight and measurement goal, slowly in stages introduce all other higher-carb vegetables, than in smaller quantities berries and fruits, then yogurt and milk, then optionally quinoa and finally you can start introducing god-made sweets like honey and pure maple syrup. During the process make sure to monitor your weight and size at intervals to make sure you are preserving your desired weight range and make adjustments to restrict or expand the variety of foods in your diet accordingly.
Important tips: The key is to know what to eat more and what to eat less and what to avoid as well as when to eat. Go for water and tea to cut your late night temptations and if that doesn't work eat salad or a little bit of nut butter, more tips to deal with temptation below. If you slip and completely blow the diet for a day or even a week, pretend this never happened and move on where you left off, you may have slowed or undone the process a bit, but it will continue to work.
It helps to occasionally skip meals or put meals closer together so you're going hungry for a longer portion of the day. It also helps to eat less some days and more some days to increase your leptin (a hormone which has a significant role in fat burn) sensitivity.
It is especially important that you at least take daily probiotics and multivitamins, especially if you're doing the "lose weight fast" diet, since it limits many healthy food groups, in order to avoid any possible unwanted side effects. In addition, to ensure you're getting sufficient nutrients, I highly recommend to those who can afford it to prefer organic raw unprocessed or minimally processed foods, grass-fed or wild meat and fowl, eggs, local produce and local farm or hunters' meat, etc. For those on a budget, here is a friend's page on which fruits and vegetables to prefer organic:
http://immydr.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/which-fruitsvegetables-must-be-consumed-organic/
How to deal with plateaus: They're a normal part of weight loss. Your body needs to settle into your new weight and your skin needs to shrink nicely so that you're not doing yo-yo, gaining back all the weight as soon as you reach your goal which can also leave marks on your skin. Sometimes when you see yourself shedding lbs nicely you think you deserve a treat and a treat becomes a daily treat and so on. Or sometimes you make a modification to your diet. Or you realize you have been binging on an entire bottle of nut butter every sitting. Or you've simply been eating the same meals over and over. Whatever the reason of the plateau or regressing period, what I found helps is this: First you must weigh yourself or calculate your body fat percentage at least once a week or month so you can identify a plateau. (When using the scale keep in mind you are not just trying to lose weight, you're trying to add on to your muscle and lose your fat; however if you're also taking your size measurements and keeping to a low-carb, high-protein diet, you can pretty much be sure what is coming off is fat and not muscle.) I'm keeping a weight loss chart and it's a good idea to track your weight loss and it feels nice when you see the excel graph going down :) Once you know you're in a plateau, change your diet. Reduce the "secondarily" and "tertiarily" lists foods a bit more strictly and replace them with more of the "primarily" foods. Try a different vegetable (for ex: asparagus instead of peppers) or a different recipe, different meals. Try more fish than other meats. Try a secondary method such as EMS (explained below) or exercise or adding supplements (also below) to your diet. Try a few of the things suggested here until you can kick-start the weight loss again. I've definitely had my plateaus and even regressions which can be a bit motivation killer, but with these methods I've been able to snap out of each of these periods and continue the overall weight loss trend. Tell yourself even after you reach the normal weight zone (by BMI standards) you can keep going and shed those last 10-20 lbs.
http://www.halls.md/body-mass-index/bmi.htm About the BMI, I'm of average height and have a fairly normal body type so the BMI is a pretty accurate guide for me but if you're unusually tall, short, muscular, large breasts for women, etc your BMI results can be less or more misleading. You may instead want to measure your body size or do body fat % tests or just check which size clothes you're fitting in. For the clothes size method, beware different companies use different size guidelines. For most women or healthy people who don't care to be muscular, but who want to be satisfied with their looks, our super ideal weight tends to be 5-10 lbs above the limit between underweight and normal (A BMI of 20-22 for women and a BMI 23-25 for men). A BMI of 17-22 tends to have longer life expectancy, a BMI of 17-25 is considered normal weight. Muscle weighs more than fat and if you weigh a lot because you're muscular and not fat, good for you. My point is: when we say weight loss, it's actually misleading, we should be calling it fat loss instead. Muscles and protein are good and needn't be and shouldn't be lost. It's important for weight losing people to monitor whether they're losing fat or muscle, while the former is good for your health, the latter isn't. In fact the more naturally acquired muscle you have, the stronger and fitter you will be. I just personally think too much of it doesn't look good on the feminine body.
More tips to deal with discouraging scale results:
When losing weight it may be necessary at times to be patient and persevere even though you may not see much change on the scale for perhaps months at a time (this is more likely to happen as you're approaching your goal and your BMI is in the normal range). You may though, notice other changes such as your body shape, meaning you may be losing more inches around the waist. this is a good thing. Our Creator is retayloring our skin to fit nicely onto our now smaller bodies and over a longer time the skin is fitted more beautifully, hopefully without stretch marks. With sufficient dedication to not losing hoping and straying, you should eventually start seeing more changes on the scale. One thing to keep in mind is that if you have a constipation problem, that's something you need to pray and solve in order to effectively eliminate your fat and swelling, especially around the abdomen. Avoiding grains, potatoes, bananas, if you're intolerant, dairy too, eating lots of vegetables and taking supplements such as chia seeds and black seed oil (fat and fiber) may be a good prayer method. You can also consider taking probiotics, especially if you've taken a lot of antibiotics in the past and also consider an herbal bowel detox program as a last resort. Rarely but definitely not frequently, you can try using natural laxatives such as senna leaf tea (beware it's created powerful). If you go to acupuncture ask for constipation needle points, poke me.
Meal samples and how to deal with cheat temptation:
Eating more raw and less processed food is better, which is good news for those who don't like spending hours in the kitchen preparing complicated dishes every single day, like myself.
For breakfast, eat 2-3 eggs with some type of meat (ground bison meat for ex), cooked in coconut oil or butter, you can also add some vegetables (think onion, peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, mushrooms), raw goat cheese, olives, cucumbers and/or salad to your meal.
Snack on celery, meat, cucumbers, pickles (watch for gluten and additives in pickles), some raw nuts or nut butter or some baby carrots dipped in basil pesto during the day to control hunger attacks. Drink plenty of water throughout the day. Remember, thirst can often be confused with hunger.
A simple large bowl of salad (green leaves, spring onion, radish, red cabbage, cucumbers, tomatoes, feta and olives tossed with olive oil, lemon juice or organic raw apple cider vinegar, salt and b. pepper) with meat (grilled, baked, stir fried in coconut oil or steamed half to one pound spicy fish fillets or skinless chicken breast) on the side is a fast to prepare, delicious dinner.
It's colorful enough that you won't get bored of eating it frequently, it's healthy, it has low calories & carb, it is packed with protein and good nutrients and it is plenty of food to eat to your fill. All the meanwhile shedding your unwanted fat off your body! If you are a lazy big appetite monster like myself, good news, you can exercise as much or as little and eat gigantic amounts and still lose weight. Of course this doesn't mean it is healthy not to exercise.
For instance to this dinner you can add vegetables (mushroom & peppers or asparagus) grilled or stir fried in coconut oil and eat some additive-free nut butter in lieu of dessert to top your dinner.
Still feeling hungry?
Drink one liter (quart) of cinnamon fruit (for ex apple peels) tea to satisfy your sweet tooth without getting any calories and to ensure you truly have no room left to eat anything else :) Not to mention, cinnamon tea is said to help with weight loss.
Do you still feel like you must cheat? Make your dessert from fruits and honey.
Go for some strawberry dipped in shredded coconut.
Or have some blackberries dipped in shredded coconut, almond flour and drizzle raw honey over it.
Freeze some pitted and peeled fruits (berries, bananas, grapes, peaches) in a bag, then put them in the blender with a bit of coconut milk and optionally raw honey and/or cocoa: tada! Here is your delicious, dairy and added sugar-free ice cream you can top with nuts.
Try some tahini (sesame paste) pekmez (grape or mulberry molasses) stir, you'll be surprised how sweet it is and how good a chocolate substitute it is.
Explore other grain and sugar free dessert recipes made with the good cereal, sugar and fat substitutes, have fun experimenting and enjoy the taste of REAL FOOD!
Check out this link for more tasty recipes: http://pan-cck.blogspot.com/2013/02/paleo-recipes.html
Starting the Paleo diet:
If possible start your diet by no longer buying any food that doesn't fit the diet and meanwhile gradually consuming your anti-diet food. Eventually you should have a house free or almost free of anti-diet food. This is a diet (not the "lose faster" diet but the general guidelines) for the whole family, young or old, healthy or sick, pregnant or not. So if all the members of your home are doing this diet together, you're more likely to succeed in it. When you don't have something you're not supposed to eat within arms reach, it becomes easier to bite the bullet and put up with some cravings. This means you should save most of your decisive motivation for when you are buying food or eating out. Then, you can relax at home knowing that everything in your kitchen is OK to eat (although not in equal quantities). To avoid shopping no-no food succesfully, I refrain from stepping in or even looking in the direction of those grocery store isles that have nothing but junk. Typically I find most of what I eat in the meat, dairy, eggs and fresh produce sections. At the checkout, I try to focus on the magazines or on helping them pack my food, so as not to stare in the eye of the chocolates wrapped in "Buy me!" scream. If it were up to me, I would allow grocery stores to keep their junk crap in only a tiny corner in the very back and have them fill the rest of the store with more fresh produce and raw meat. Halas... That would have most likely resulted in a healthier and thinner nation overall, but guess who doesn't care about that. Capitalists who are after money and power, and the government who serves them.
Settling in the diet-good news: your taste palate might have been used to over-processed or junk food but the more you eat real raw food the more you will appreciate its taste and your body will even start craving it. If you decide to dive in this diet with the "lose weight faster" directions like I did, the first few days of your diet change you may experience something vaguely similar to alcohol, coffee or tobacco withdrawal: a lot of us are "addicted" to high carb foods and refined sugar and when you suddenly start depriving your body of sugar you can feel slightly light-headed with heavy sweet cravings for a few days. Once you get over these first few days, essentially your body having done a mini detox, your sweet and junk cravings will significantly reduce or completely disappear. The more you stick to the diet, the more you will find it easier to stick to it as your body and your taste will quickly adapt to this fat loss mode and you will love this way of life more with every pound shed. Eventually you will reach a point where you will never want to put a greasy chip in your mouth or shove some coke or high fructose corn syrup packed soda down your throat.
Is there a need to mention? Avoid tobacco, the smoke of any organic material, alcohol and chemical drugs for improved health and easier weight loss.
Sleeping regularly and sufficiently:Improves general physical and psychological health, helps weight loss. Some recommend that one is asleep between 10pm-12am for optimal rest and avoids sleeping right before sunset and right around sunrise. Being awake before and after sunrise should make you feel more energetic. Siestas are also recommended to rejuvenate your tired body midday. Try the Paleo sleep cycle of going to sleep soon (1-2 hrs) after sunset and waking before sunrise. Try dimming lights and turning off electronics after sunset to make your environment more conducive to sleep.
Exercise/Dancing and Sun exposure: Doing natural movement exercises (such as hiking, trekking, climbing, walking (if you have injured feet like myself try biking as a substitute), swimming) 1/2-1 hour a few times a week helps keep your body firm, toned, improves general physical and psychological health, increases your energy, lung capacity, motivation and vitality. Good for depression, minimally good for weight/fat loss. Try exercising out doors in fresh air and under sunlight (sufficient sun exposure is important for Vitamin D). You can do these slow/moderate exercises as much as you want (at least 3-5 hrs/week). You are also recommended to do 1.5 to 2 hours a week (but not more!) of a mix of cardio (biking up the mountain, swimming fast, running) and weight lifting. You should also sprint every once in a while. Check Mark's website (the guru of Primal) for more info:
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/primal-blueprint-workout-plan-basics/#axzz2PExQUTc5
Meditation/Yoga/Sufi dhikr:Calms body and mind, allows spiritual enlightenment, reduces stress, feeds the soul, relaxes to the point of reducing pain.
Supplements:If you're going to buy supplements, do your research first to choose a good brand. Choose food extract natural vitamins (or rather vitamin complexes) instead of synthetic ones and choose probiotics with effective delivery method and a variety of high count live bacteria strains.
Unfortunately supplements are needed for most people even when they eat according to this healthy plan which includes tons of raw plants. This has a lot to do with the way we have destroyed our environment, first with agriculture, then and mostly with the development of industry. For more info:
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/definitive-guide-to-primal-supplementation/#axzz2PExQUTc5
Probiotics: use daily to improve digestion and immune system by increasing the ratio of good bacteria in the gut while decreasing the ratio of bad bacteria. This is supposed to help a lot with fat loss especially in the midsection. Consider your guts comprise most of your immune system (70-80%).
Multivitamin for wo/men: use daily to improve your physical and psychological health
Omega 3 fish oil: improves brain function, helps reduce depression (use daily to improve your physical and psychological health). use dietary supplement daily. recommended for autism spectrum.
Calcium:
If you're not getting enough calcium consider this daily.
Vitamin D: If you're not under the sun all day along consider this daily.
Vitamin C: colds, flu, improves body's immune system, also helps dry chronic rosacea with topical application and helps it heal faster when it happens. (You can drink 1/2-1 teaspoon a day with water unless you have diarrhea for general improved health)
Flaxseed or Chia seeds: good to sprinkle on your daily salad about half or one tbsp of chia seeds or "fresh ground" (not pre-ground) flaxseed for added Omega 3 & fiber (should help with digestion by the will of the Creator of the Universe).
Black Seed Oil: one teaspoon in the morning before food to improve general health. this is a good medicine for many things.
Naturally caffeine free herbal teas such as cinnamon, lemon peel, flowers and fruits, mint, ginger, rooibos, black pepper, etc-drink 1 liter warm daily (particularly in the morning) for improved digestion and weight loss. Additionally, one should drink 2-3 liters of water (not other liquids) every day (depending on how dry your climate is). It's said that drinking colder water helps weight loss.
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For more tips on home, herbal and alternative healing for a variety of conditions from small cuts to debilitating chronic ailments as well as what to watch out for when you buy and use cleaning products, self hygiene products and clothing, scroll up.
