The Top 20 Time-Tested Healthy Habits for a Longer Life

Happy New Year!! I hope that you all had a great & safe new Year’s celebration.

Now the hangovers are done with and we are in the middle of resolution time I thought that I would share the following list with you…

So without further ado here are The Top 20 time-tested healthy habits to living longer that have survived for centuries…

1.     Eat fewer processed carbs, more plants, fruits and nuts.

2.      Have some lean protein with every meal.

Eat more of these with lean protein

3.      Put family first – Time with family is priceless and usually lowers stress levels and hence lowers cortisol which means les storage as belly fat.

4.       Take a walk. Move more we were not meant to sit all day or stay in the one spot. Have a stroll every 45 minutes – even if it is just for 5 minutes.

5.      Drink a glass of red wine daily. Reveratol etc etc – red still beats white for the good health properties.

6.      Reduce and manage stress by exercising, talking with a loved one or taking up a practise like Mediation, Tai Chi or Yoga. Bottomline stress kills so avoid it, reduce it or deal with it!

7.      Have a purpose find something that excites you when you wake up each morning.

8.      Spend more times outdoors – it will re-connect you with the world ourside your house & place of work.

9.      Be grateful – appreciate what you’ve got more than you rue what you do not.

10.  Have fun – do things that you enjoy, love life!

Move more, lift, push pull & play...

11.  Maintain a healthy body weight – recondition that etabolism, get leaner, eat better, avoid ingesting too much crap.

12.  Get regular exercise – push, pull. twist, run, walk, move weights, jump and play. Just move more. Remember we were designed to hunt, nit sit all day.

13.  Love and laugh – at the same time wherever possible (except when eating – messy…)

14.  Snack on nuts and low GI vegetables, low GI fruit and low fat cheese.

15.  Give something back. No esoteria here but paying things forward, giving when you whave wants seems to smooth the way…

16.  Eat 6 times a day – 3 ‘mains’ and 3 ‘snacks’

17. Eat a large breakfast with protein and good carbs.

18.  Eat a medium lunch –

19.  Eat a small dinner

20.  Drink plenty of water.

You can't get enough of this...

21.  Sleep when it’s dark.

22. Learn new things. It keeps you young, your brain working and lets you talk to others.

Well that was 22 but I couldn’t find anyhting about counting correctly when I researched this…

Next Post – we’re back into firing up your metabolism, getting leaner and some more hormone news…

Post Christmas – Recovery from Over Indulging…

Hi – I hope that you all had a great Christmas day and Santa brought you what you wanted!!

Well Christmas dinner is over, done and dusted. And you’re feeling….well stuffed, over fed, pants too tight, got a good case of belly bloat going on and that furry tongue feeling that comes from either too much alcohol. too many sweet carbs or a mixture of both.

You mean there's more...

You know you should have followed the last post and eaten your Protein first but the honeyed veges looked too good, the egg nog was too plentiful and well you just let go and enjoyed youself. Another Christmas day come & gone and you feel a bit guilty and find part of your mind saying (again) never again..

Okay time to move past this, time to get back on track, tme to recognise that this was a temporary diversion and most of all time to repair some of the damage done.

So how to do this?

Firstly realise that letting go of your diet control once & a while is okay, just make sure that you climb back on the wagon.

Here’s how – your metabolism has been given a hiding, your digestive system has been stressed far beyond normal limits so you need to hit the ‘reset button’.

This little trick will do the what’s needed: Once Christmas day and the following one (Boxing Day here in Australia) are done then make a decision to stay away from all highly processed, high GI foods and focus on lean Protein, fresh fruit and fibrous vegetables. Add some healthy fats via nuts & avocado and you are well on the way to getting back on track.

You'll need lots of this...

This means waking up and having an omelette with some spanish onion and mushrooms in it and avoiding cereal & milk. It means grabbing an apple or a peach and some almonds for a snack, having big salads with olive oil dressing and chicken or turkey breast, it means avoiding breads, crackers or that the left over Christmas pudding, Pavlova or pie.

It means drinking a lot of water. A lot of water.

Eating like this will reduce the bloat, ease the stress on your digestive system and beat back those sugary carb cravings.

This works by allowing a number of things to happen – fewer carbs means your body has a chance to normalise & stabilise blood sugar levels after the havoc of the days just gone. Your pancreas gets a break and you insulin levels will drop also. Your body will release excess fluids (high sugary carbs creates water retention – and drinking extra water when eating lower carbs actually forces a situation where excess retained water is ‘let go’). High sugaery carbs also unleash the cravings monster and eating as described above will blunt these.

... and lots of these...

So December 27th or 28th get stuck into water and left over protein , veges and fruit. Pass on the potatoes, the bread and sweets, pie & cakes. Not only will you lose the bloat but you’ll feel better quicker and be back on track for a fit & lean 2011.

My best wishes for a Safe & Happy New Year – may 2011 be the year all your dreams come true!!

So Are Low Carb Diets Still Effective For Fat Loss?

Hi welcome back!!

Low carb diets are back in the news again so it seeems timely to revisit them. Let’s be clear – cutting out ANY macronutrient group is a mistake, BUT certainly sub-types of macronutrients should be curtailed for health benefits and fat loss.

Say Low Carb & most fok think that this about all you can eat...

There is no doubt & lots of studies that prove that Low Carb diets result in weight loss (not just fat – more on this later) for those who follow the protocols correctly. The protocol, roughly speaking is eating less than 100 grams of carbs per day over an extended period of time. (in the Atkins phasing in period it is down to 20 or 30 grams)

The instinctive knee jerk from the popular press and most nutritionists is that low carb diets are bad for your health. A lot of these people who lost weight on these older style low carb diets became, in effect, skinnier fat people.

This is because shedding carbs usually involves water loss and if too severe for too long can also result in muscle being broken down for fuel in preference to fat – so you lose weight but end up percentage-wise just as fat as before. But with less muscle, a slower metabolism and rebound weight that is incredible to endure!!

The howls of outrage about the evils of low carb are based upon outmoded, and frankly decades old types of low carb diets. Originally Atkins cut out all types of carbs, but as the years went by they then developed the idea of ‘net carbs’ where eating fibre rich carbs was okay as these were nutritionally dense but calorie & more importantly sugar poor.

So the idea of low carb meaning no carbs at all is not only out of date and old fashioned but it is plain wrong. Likewise the idea that low carb means that you must eat loads of fat. The best low carb diets do NOT advocate an open slather approach to fat in your diet – they advocate eating lean protein wherever possible.

These days low carb means cutting out processed carbs, and eating your fill of fresh vegetables and some fruit. Eating low carb in this fashion supplies all of the nutrients that the nutritionists are concerned about you missing out when you eat ‘traditional’ low carb.

Not a lot of processed carbs here...

But there has been further research papers published recently that shows that folk on low carb diets did not lose a lot of weight.

Let’s talk weight first – the most beneficial thing for your health, if overweight, is to lose fat. Losing weight is a misnomer and a dangerous one. Many diets cause you to lose weight through water and muscle loss. The infamous detox & some shake only diets do this which is why the rebound weight gain is so high. Unfortunately when this happens you ahave less muscle, your metabolism has slowed and you find it harder to lose fat. And so it goes.

Upon examination however it turns out that the folk who ate low carb had one or more of the following failings:

1) They cut carbs but kept their alcohol consumption at their regular level. Alcohol, as we’ve noted in other posts, kills fat loss.
2) They didn’t eat lean meat & protein but went the high fat route. Again not the way to lose weight nevermind about fat.

Not lean - High Protein should not mean high fat!!


3) For a number of people dropping back to 100 grams of carbs was not really going low carb, just dropping their own carb intake lower. 100 grams of carbs is considered moderate in most studies.
4) At the other end were the folk who declared all carbs bad and so deprived their bodies of not only the preferential fuel source but also a lot of needed nutrients.

So what is the right way to use a low carb diet?

Well firstly you should view it as a lower processed carb diet – not a low carb one.
When followed properly, a lower processed carb diet sees you eat more lean protein to supply your body the nutrients to build new lean muscle. The amino acids from protein sources can also be used to provide your body with some of its energy needs.

Couple this with a moderate intake of healthy fats, a lowered alcohol intake and you have a solid basis to lose fat.

As you’ve heard me say before – carbs are not the enemy but we tend to eat not only too many carbs but too many of the wrong types of carbs. In the main eating high GI, highly processed carbs leads to fat gain.

So doing something as simple as replacing half of your current processed carb intake with low GI un- or lightly processed carbs may very well help you to begin to lose fat.

This is why a lower processed carb diet may be beneficial to you is because it forces you to stop eating all the processed simple carbs that usually contain a lot of calories but not a lot of nutrients. And we know that a lack of needed nutrients leads to cravings and increased hunger which leads to more eating which leads to…

By eating a greatly reduced amount of processed carbs you also re-train your body to adjust the way it utilises the calories. Add to this the increase in lean protein with good fats and your body will become more efficient at functioning with fewer sugars. Also by lowering processed carbs it becomes easier to use up the stored carbs and fat you are carrying around.

Following a low processed carb diet is an effective way to lose fat, to learn to eat in a healthier manner by choosing better foods and training your body to use the nutrients differently and more efficiently.

The original low carb approach had a lot to recommend it but the true value lies in a low processed carbs diet. This is the one that works.

Have you followed a true low carb diet before? Were you successful with it?
Let me know in the comments section below…

New study shows that being even a kilo of fat overweight can shorten your life!!

Hi – Welcome Back!!

If you are 20 lbs (9 kg) or more overweight not only is your metabolism broken but a new study reports that even one extra kilo raises death risk.

The American Cancer Society has just released a study which involved about 1.5 million people.
Its findings? Aim to get slim and stay there.

This is one of the largest studies ever undertaken that looks at weight and the correlation between the two.

Way over a few pounds overweight...

The surprise is that you DONT have to be classed as obese to raise the chance of dying prematurely. Just being overweight carries an increased risk of early death.

The contribution of overweight to early death has been controversial up until now with the majority opinion being that a little extra flesh on your bones is not necessarily a bad thing. There has even been some research (including a somewhat controversial 2005 study by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention) that concluded being overweight didn’t raise the risk of death) and suggested that a little pudge has little effect on overall longevity or mortality.

I think that this idea of a ‘little extra reserve’ helps you prevent becoming ill is a hangover from the old days when food was scarce. In the West this has been as recent as during WWII.

Not anymore! Because of its size ( the researchers pulled together 19 separate studies that ranged in length for 5 – 28 years in length) and the diversity of the studies included it would seem that the research provides strong evidence against the notion that it’s okay or even a good thing for your health if you are overweight.

The researchers excluded those who developed cancer, smoked or has heart disease so the focus would be on weight. The conclusion of this latest study (remember 1.5 million people!) was that otherwise healthy but overweight white adults were 13 per cent more likely to die during the time they were followed during the study than those whose weight was in an ideal range.

This conclusion was published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine and is similar to those of three other large studies suggesting that there is no an increasing and large (no pun intended!!) body of evidence that supports the finding that being overweight, even if not obese, is associated with an increase in the risk of death.

The less you are overweight, the smaller the risk increase but there is still an increase regardless.
I have a couple of issues with the study though – they used the body Mass Index – a measurement of obesity based on a formula using weight & height – which as we all know does not allow for a person’s levels of activity or more importantly take into account the amount of lean tissue that they are carrying. Overweight begins at a BMI measurement of 25, obese at 30 and morbidly obese at 40.

Most world class sprinters and other sportspeople are classified as obese by the BMI when clearly they are not…

By any standard the BMI is not an accurate predictor of individual obesity. However when applied over a wide subject group it is a tolerable ‘rule of thumb’.

There was a correlation between the findings on early mortality and the BMI of the subjects – basically the higher your BMI (the more obese the subject) the higher the increase in early mortality. Compared with subjects whose BMI was in the ‘normal’ range,, those who were overweight had a 13 percent increase in early death. If the BMI classified the subject as obese then the risk increase range was from 44 to 88 per cent. The morbidly obese for those who were obese carried a 2.5 times increase in the likelihood of their dying prematurely.

So what is the take away from all this?? (well cut down on take aways for a start…)
Recondition your metabolism so that it is burning fat and use the information provided here to shift your body from overweight to lean.

Back soon…