Eat smart, not less App

NutracheckResearch* shows that keeping track of calories in a food diary can double weight loss because it makes you more aware of portion sizes and food choices. The Nutracheck App  keeps track of the calories for you.

Many people think that losing weight means eating less food. Not so if you choose wisely – it’s the type of food that’s the problem. By changing the proportions of what you put on your plate, you can still enjoy a good volume of food that will fill you up but without the high calorie count.

It’s all about energy density. Quite simply, ‘energy density’ refers to the amount of energy (or calories) per gram of food.

Lower energy density foods provide fewer calories per gram of food so you can eat more of them – it’s a good way to help control how much you eat, without going hungry. These foods often have a high water content, such as stews or soups; foods like pasta and rice that absorb water during cooking, and foods that are naturally high in water, such as fruit and vegetables.

Nutracheck is a super fast calorie counter and food diary service, delivered via an App and website, that makes tracking calories easy. Just set aside 10 minutes a day to record what you eat from over 180,000 foods and drinks in the database; photos of food are on the site to make it really easy to spot the exact product you ate. The App lets you scan a barcode and add a food in just 2 clicks.

There are no banned foods, so you’re free to choose the foods you want to eat while you lose weight at a steady and healthy rate of around 2lbs a week. It’s a fact that when we pay close attention to what we eat, we tend to eat less.

In contrast, high energy density foods tend to include foods that are high in fat and have a low water content, such as chocolate, cakes, biscuits, crisps, peanuts, butter and cheese. A very small amount has a high calorie count, which doesn’t fill you up – so it’s really easy to overindulge.

Download the App: search for ‘Nutracheck’ in the App Store or Google Play, by registering at Nutracheck. 

Women need more iron

woman youngThe symptoms of low iron are:

  • Fatigue
  • Low energy
  • Difficulty with concentration
  • Cognitive problems
  • Heart palpitations
  • Shortness of breath after exertion
  • Concave fingernails

Women need more iron

Women – Iron is the only mineral where women’s requirements are greater than men’s, this is due to menstrual blood loss and pregnancy. Iron is a one of the difficult minerals for the body to absorb.

Pregnant Women – can be prone to low iron levels because your baby needs the iron it gets from you to grow and develop. Iron deficiency is common in women carrying twins, vegetarians or women who are having pregnancies close together. An adult woman needs to absorb between 1.5 – 2mg of iron per day. For a pregnant woman, this can increase to 2 – 4mg in the second trimester and 3 – 6mg in the third trimester.

Women who exercise – runners especially need to ensure appropriate iron intake because of ‘foot strike’ hemolysis (repeated pounding of the feet on a hard surface which can damage red blood cells) and iron loss through sweating and urine.

Over 60s – As we get older, our capacity to absorb iron diminishes. This coupled with a reduction in appetite can lead to less than ideal iron levels.

SpaTone Apple  contains Spatone® spa water that is rich in iron from the Snowdonia National Park. Iron is more easily absorbed with Vitamin C so apple juice has been incorporated in Spatone Apple.  It’s a great way of taking it because it doesn’t make you constipated, which some iron tablets can do.

Good sources of iron in your diet include red meat, whole grains, pulses, nuts, green leafy vegetables and dried fruit, but it can be difficult to absorb – needing Vitamin C to make it more absorbable.   Young women are often at risk of low iron levels because of losing it through their periods.

Use the promotion code: HSoul1 to get a 5 per cent discount at superfooduk.com. Click below: Nelsons Spatone Apple 28 day pack (28 sachets): £11.95

 

Tax sugary drinks?

sugar Recommendations to put an extra 20 per cent tax on sugary drink to prevent people becoming obese were put forward by the BMA (British Medical Association) recently. But will anything change? Recommendations come out all the time but do they get taken up. The BMA claims that poor diets cost 70,000 premature deaths a year.

The BMA suggests an extra tax of 20 per cent on unhealthy food and drinks. A 330ml fizzy drink is likely to contain up to nine teaspoonfuls of sugar. Apparently a sugar tax on drinks in Mexico has resulted in lower consumption. The overall aim is to reduce the number of people becoming obese and getting diabetes, which are both attributed to the increase in sugar consumption, which is highest in the 11 to 18 year old group. They take 15.6 per cent of their energy from sugar, when the limit for everyone should be 5 per cent.

There should be restrictions on promoting unhealthy foods to children through advertising and fun characters. Instead they suggest that there should be marketing campaigns to promote awareness and the importance of healthy foods. Other suggestions are for school meals to include a free fruit and vegetable scheme, and for the price of fruit and vegetables to be subsidised.

How many times have you visited a hospital and found the full range of fizzy drinks, crisps, sweets and chocolate on sale in the shop? The recommendations suggest banning these sales, and having a traffic light coding on food.
Other recommendations include:
• No trans fats in food allowed.
• Compulsory reduction of salt levels in food and drink products.
• Targets to reduce calories, fat, saturated fat and added sugar levels in a range of soft drinks, confectionery, biscuits, and many other processed foods.
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Needless to say this needs international co-operation.
Dire warnings from the British Medical Association include the spectre of 30 per cent of the UK population being obese by 2030.

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On your feet Britain

walking peopleThe On your feet Britain campaign is led by the British Heart Foundation and Get GB Standing. Sedentary lifestyles have been recently found to be bad for our health in general. Sitting for more than four hours every day has been found by researchers to cause:

• Enzymes responsible for burning harmful blood fats shutting down.
• Reduced calorie burning (metabolic rate).
• Disrupted blood sugar levels.
• Increased insulin and blood pressure levels.
• Leg muscles switch off.

For practical reasons one London ad agency used to have meetings standing up so that they wouldn’t waste too much time, and no coffee was on offer!

Carnegie researchers Dr Michelle Mellis and Dr Zoe Rutherford, provide expert advice on how to become more active in the workplace.

1. Take small-group walking meetings – this is a pleasant way to have discussions with your colleagues and get some activity.

2. Do a standing meeting – these have been reported to be more productive so they will be over quicker! Remember our time is precious.

3. Walk to a photocopier/printer at the opposite end of the corridor or on the next floor.
4. Remove the kettle from your office and walk to the staff room instead.
5. Do stretching exercises at your desk to mobilise – these small movements count as light physical activity.
6. Drink water so you get up to get refills or to go to the loo!
7. Move the rubbish bin to the opposite side of the office so you have to get up.
8. Walk over to colleagues rather than sending an email or phoning them.
9. Stand up and pace when on the phone.
10. Set a reminder on your computer or phone to stand and move around every 30 minutes – alternate between sitting and standing.
11. Take active breaks – walk around the office or go outside for 5 minutes.

12. Leave your desk for lunch – many of us are culprits of working over lunch but it’s important to take a break to boost productivity in the afternoon.

13. Go out to get lunch or drinks for the team – this will always go down well!

There are other serious risks of spending a lot of time sitting, irrespective of your level of physical activity:

Heart disease
Diabetes
Obesity
Cancer
Back ache
Dementia
Depression
Muscle degeneration
Find out more at: www.getbritainstanding.org

Not much help for emotional over-eating

Misunderstanding, lack of help and stigma affect people with emotional over-eating issues  a survey by Beat – the UK’s leading eating disorder charity – has found.

Over 1,000 people across the UK responded to the survey and the findings were significant.

  • 88 per cent said their problems with food were related to emotional problems.
  • 73 per cent who visited their GP said their emotional health wasn’t investigated.
  • 92 per cent said they’d like to lose weight.
  • 76 per cent  felt their self esteem was low.
  • 85 per cent had a negative body image of themselves

Two thirds of the population in England alone are overweight or obese and in the last 25 years there has been a 400 per cent increase in obesity. This has led to predictions that half of Britons will be obese by the year 2050. Also see Losing Weight.

 

What is emotional eating?

Emotional eating is a new term coined to emphasise that eating too much doesn’t happen by accident. Behind most large people are a range of negative emotions – self-disgust, loathing, wretchedness, feelings of rejection, feeling unloved and ugly, and a sense of despair.

Dr Andrew Hill Professor of Medical Psychology at Leeds University said ‘Emotions, mainly negative emotions, play a major role in unwanted and uncontrolled eating.  Unhelpful relationships between food, eating, and mood can be long-standing and very difficult to change.  They are also very difficult to talk to others about.  For some people, recognising the interplay between food and feelings is an important first step.  Others require more specialist psychological support.

‘Lifting the stigma of mental health is one of the challenges for our time.  Understanding the role of food and eating in emotional health is part of this challenge, as is making opportunities for access to the varieties of helpful support available.”

Find out more at www.b-eat.co.uk

The root of the problem

Frequently the issues with food start in childhood and let’s face it most parents use some ploys to get their children to eat – who hasn’t been guilty of rewarding their kids with chocolate when they do something good? The kind of behaviour that can result in emotional issues around food are:

• Parents using food as a punishment
• Parents using food as a reward
• Disharmony at the dinner table between children and adults or parents
• Emotional difficulties in childhood concerning divorce or parents, death of someone close, bullying and much more
• Being told to eat up everything because of the starving people in Africa

‘Comments about feeding the starving people in Africa or India are completely irrelevant because the food we leave won’t get to them, but it can do immense harm,’ says Bar Hewlett, a Cognitive Behaviour Therapist with Lighter Life.

‘I liken food to other addictions like alcohol, but people don’t often recognise this. Some people say that they need a cigarette or a drink to make them better but with the exception of chocolate they don’t always say it about food.

‘With emotional eating the rational you has gone and you eat things that you may not even want instead of something healthy. It hasn’t got anything to do with hunger.

‘Parents often manipulate their children – “You’ll eat it if you love me. I’ve spent a lot of time preparing this food. What a good boy/girl – you’ve cleared your plate” And some mothers give a lot of food to their children to make up for the love they are unable to offer. Consequently the child learns if they want love from their parent they will have to put up with food so they transfer their feelings on to the food.

‘When someone is ill they often tell you what they want to eat – it’s usually what their mother gave them when they were sick as it brings them comfort. Similarly when people are unhappy they go back to the food they liked as a child – sweets, chocolate or whatever it may be.

Cognitive behaviour therapy

Cognitive behaviour therapy is offered as part of a diet plan with Lighter Life. Bar explains, ‘We get people to keep a thought diary and to recognise how they are feeling and relate it to their behaviour. This gives them a chance to make their thoughts more realistic and alter their behaviour too. Instead of eating the whole box of chocolates they can just have two today and two tomorrow.’

Hypnotherapy

There are various ways of changing behaviour patterns and if someone is put into a hypnotic state of deep relaxation they are able to accept and respond to suggestions. ‘It is as if they are on autopilot,’ explains hypnotherapist Jose Penrose.

Jose helps people with weight problems at her Surrey clinic. ‘My sessions last an hour and we spend 20 to 40 minutes discussing the issues around the person’s weight problem.’ Once she has gathered all the facts she puts them under hypnosis to help them to change their behaviour – be it bingeing or snacking all the time.

‘I usually ask them what has motivated them to lose weight, what their goal weight or dress size is, and how life would be different if they achieve their goal.

‘Many people’s weight is bound up with their self-esteem, particularly if they are yo-yo dieting and never achieving any lasting weight loss. Often they think, “People don’t fancy me so why bother?”

‘I saw a woman who had been abused by her father when she was a child. She felt this was at the root of the problem. A few weeks after she had had hypnosis she was at peace with herself and much happier and she had lost a stone in weight.’

*Survey from Lighter Life Magazine

BEAT charity,  www.b-eat.co.uk

Contact Carole Gaskell, at the Lifecoaching Company, 01628 488990, www.lifecoaching-company.co.uk

Lighter Life weight loss programme includes cognitive behaviour therapy and replacement meals, 08700 664747, www.lighterlife.co.uk

Jose Penrose is a hypnotherapist, counsellor and life coach in Surrey: 01483 769058, www.mindtochange.co.uk

General Hypnotherapy Register, Lymington, Hampshire, 01590 683770, www.general-hypnotherapy-register.com

Tricia Woolfrey, hypnotherapist, 01932 354746, www.pw-hypnotherapy.co.uk

The Lean Team provides interactive health coaching for people who want to lose weight: www.theleanteam.co.uk