Good Food / Bad Food - What's Left to Eat?Written by Kathryn Martyn, M.NLP
We've entered Twilight Zone when it comes to multitude of diets being promoted today. Starting with Atkins Diet followed by South Beach Diet, both higher in protein, lower in carbs, but distinction should be on quality of carbs, not singling out one nutrient as "bad." If you are on Atkins Diet or South Beach Diet simply adjust from eating low quality carbs like refined flour and highly refined sugar products (comes in a box, or ready-to-eat) to eating more whole food products like fresh vegetables and fruits, yes fruits.Apples vs. Apple Jacks - You be Judge I know traditional Atkins Diet (especially in Induction phase) doesn't advocate much fruit (too high sugar, so they say) but think about that for one minute. My strong belief is that an apple is a good food, a bowl of Apple Jacks cereal may not be on an equal level. One is highly processed, sweetened by added white sugar and corn syrup, and one is natural, plucked from a tree and sweetened by sun. Which would you choose? Don't shun fresh fruit for sake of following your low carb diet to letter. Eliminating healthy, wholesome foods is not best way to learn to eat better, but severely cutting back on frequency of eating highly processed foods is. I saw a site which called it GM or MM: God Made or Man Made. If you think of those terms when you go to choose your foods, it starts to make more sense. No one says you shouldn't eat chips, or whatever strikes your fancy, but make them a treat - and eat GM foods more often. Time for Common Sense Diet Common sense will answer question about what to eat. If you are on Atkins, South Beach or any variation of low carb diet, avoid processed foods, not natural foods. Stop using "instant" breakfast, and cook whole rolled oats for instance. Sure you might have to get up 10 minutes earlier, oh well. You're worth it! You can still stay on a higher protein food plan, but this one minor adjustment will allow you to continue with your eating plan for a lifetime, rather than a short-time. I'd go insane if I couldn't eat my daily apple, banana or other fruit. I love fruit. I think there's a very good reason humans desire sweet foods - Vitamin C, and other nutrients, including bioflavonoids.
| | Our love affair with hating exercise.Written by Darryn Aldridge
We all have at one time or another muttered and cursed under our breath about pain of having to exercise, yet deep down we all know that we must.I mean, all of us know deep down (and for some it really is well hidden), that for us to live healthy lifestyles we really do need to be putting some sort of effort into making proper exercise a reality. I’m afraid to say that lifting remote controller off coffee table to change channels, or rushing to toilet during ads after drinking 6 cans of beer while game airs, doesn’t really count for a lot! So what makes one person leap out of bed in early hours of morning to go for a run, while others roll over and snuggle deeper in their blankets telling themselves that tomorrow will be big day? It comes down to focus. What you focus on you will achieve. You see if we focus on all reasons why we shouldn’t, or can’t be bothered to exercise, then we create perfect environment to justify why we won’t, and we then end up not doing a thing. We dream up great reasons for not doing things. We focus on weather, time of day, our current physical condition, in fact we can find anything at all as a great reason not to do something. So what happens now becomes our next major hurdle. You see, we build on these excuses and as time goes by we really do start to believe them, and they start to become our reality. Do you want to know truth? I used to do same thing for years on end. I would tell anyone who could be bothered to listen, that I just couldn’t run to save myself (I was conveniently forgetting that many other forms of exercise was available to me other than just running) and boy did it work for me! I did nothing for years, except put on weight and feel worse about myself.
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