fbpx

3 Diet Myths to Toss

Originally posted on The Daily Zeel! 
3 Diet Myths to Toss | The Organic Beauty Blog
The field of nutrition is a relatively new one, which means there is tons of seemingly contradictory information floating around, much of it with science to back it up! This can be incredibly confusing and frustrating to someone just looking to get healthy and eat well. Though there are several different approaches to eating that can be equally beneficial to different people with varying body types, activity levels and needs, there are definitely some major diet myths and trends that everyone can stand to cut out in spring 2012, along with last year’s harem pants and formaldehyde-ridden keratin treatments.

DIET MYTH #1: All calories are created equal

The biggest problem with most calorie-counting diets is that they are based on the premise that a calorie is a calorie – and less calories equals greater health. There is so much wrong with this principle. Eating a 2,000 calorie diet of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and clean proteins is not the same as eating the same number of calories in “low-cal” snack foods, refined carbs like pizza and pasta, and saturated fats from meat.
Yes, lowering your overall caloric intake will help you lose weight, but it is your intake of powerful micro and macronutrients that will help you lower cholesterol, blood pressure and cancer risk while staying slim and healthy long-term!
Low calorie snack packs and other diet foods that allow you to eat smaller portions of unhealthy foods do absolutely nothing for your health, and may even thwart your efforts at losing weight by feeding your body empty calories (i.e. calories without any nutritional benefit) that don’t really satisfy your hunger.

DIET MYTH #2: Carbs are the enemy

Carbohydrates are finally starting to come back after their widespread blacklisting through the dark times of high-protein diets, but there are still so many people out there who avoid carbs like the plague. The problem with this approach is that it holds healthy whole grains like brown rice, quinoa and buckwheat to the same negative standard as refined, bleached flours and starchy foods. While processed carbs like cookies, pastries and other white flour foods are definite diet busters, whole grains are loaded with fiber, protein and minerals, and are actually a major ally in weight loss!
Eliminating all carbs and grains from your diet often times leads to serious cravings, nutritional deficiencies and digestive problems – that is totally not the answer. Try to cut the white carbs, but feel free to adopt a more balanced diet with some whole grain breads, brown rice and even quinoa pasta!

DIET MYTH #3: Fats cause weight gain

Fats are another food group that have gotten a terrible rap over the last few decades. The truth is, America’s obsession with low-fat food has had no small part in the obesity epidemic and distorted relationship with food that grows more and more serious each year.
Fats are a vital part of a healthy diet, and are super important for energy, brain and heart health, weight management, and even healthy skin and hair! But as with carbs, not all fats are the same. Saturated fats found in meat and dairy need to be eaten in moderation, and trans fats found in processed and fried foods are terrible for your health, leading to more than just ballooning waist lines. Healthy, mono- and polyunsaturated fats found in nuts, avocadoes, fish and olive oil, on the other hand, are wonderful foods that keep you fuller longer, and help you live a longer, healthier life.
The bottom line is that a restrictive, unsatisfying diet is not the answer for long-term, sustained weight loss. As with all things in life, the key with healthy eating is balance. Although every body is different, with different needs regarding caloric intake and protein (not to mention varying levels of sensitivities to foods containing dairy and gluten), a safe bet across the board is to opt for a balanced, whole foods diet full of brightly colored vegetables and fruits, whole grains and healthy fats. Restricting your diet or eliminating an entire food group may shock your system into losing weight initially, but it also deprives it of vital nutrients, satisfaction and long-term stability.
Forget these diet myths, and make 2012 your healthiest year yet!

SaveSave

A More Sensual You: Eating Your Way to Your Sexiest Self!

As we gear up for the romance of Valentine’s Day, I thought it would be a great time to delve into the concept of sensuality, and the amazing benefits of living a sensual life.  Don’t worry, this isn’t going anywhere kinky… Sensuality is simply defined as indulging in one’s senses, which is a wonderful way to boost confidence, beauty, promote weight loss, and be an overall sexier version of yourself!
 A More Sensual You Eating Your Way to Your Sexiest Self! 5 | The Organic Beauty Blog
Indulging in our senses in regards to food is an amazing way to enjoy eating more, while not over-eating. This promotes a much healthier relationship to food, and is a wonderful way to manage weight as well.  Rushing through meals, eating while on the go, or while distracted by TV, computers, or even reading doesn’t allow our bodies and minds to really connect with the food we are eating.  It takes more food to get the mind to register fullness, and often times, we don’t feel satiated or fulfilled after a meal.  What a waste of eating!!
Next time you sit down to a meal, engage all of your senses to make the experience fulfilling, meaningful, and even sexy:
  • Sight:  If you are eating a home-cooked meal (or even if you get take out), take the time to artfully arrange and plate your food so it is visually appealing.  This can be a bit of a food ritual that prepares your mind and body for the meal that is about to come, and elevates eating to a more meaningful experience.  Food is delicious, beautiful, and so fun to consume!  Re-engage with the visual pleasure of eating before you dig in every day, and whether you are sharing a romantic dinner with a loved one, or eating a delicious lunch solo, your meal becomes that much more special and healthy.
    • Obviously, using and consuming the highest quality food is also a big part of sight.  Aim for many different bright colors, and a variety of foods on your plate.  Sitting down to a dinner of fried, white foods devoid of nutrients isn’t nearly as satisfying as a beautiful plate of bright vegetables, whole grains, herbs and spices!
    • Create a delicious little combination of foods, flavors and colors in every bite, and take time to appreciate the beauty of the food before it goes into your mouth!  This literally helps your body get primed for digesting and enjoying every last bit.
    • Set the table, light a candle, make every meal special, and the effects on your mood, mind, and waistline will be undeniable!  And the romance of sharing a meal with your special someone, looking at their face as well as the beautiful food you’re eating, creates an air of sensuality that can even be a part of foreplay.
  • Sound:  Create a romantic environment for every meal.  Eating should always be done in a relaxed, calm state.  The TV blaring, while on the phone with your mom, and your roommate clicking away on her computer does not equal calm and relaxed!  Turn off the TV and computer, silence your phone, maybe even put on some beautiful background music.  Eating in this environment allows your body to focus on the sights, smells, and taste of your food, promotes healthy digestion, and helps you feel more full, which counteracts over eating!
    • This is also a great way to elevate an average, every day meal into a romantic special occasion!  Try it, pick a few nights this week and just sit down to a quiet, calm, distraction-free meal with your loved ones or just by yourself.
  • A More Sensual You Eating Your Way to Your Sexiest Self! 6 | The Organic Beauty BlogTouch:  Were you told as a child to stop playing with your food?  Well forget all of that.  Many cultures believe that one cannot fully enjoy or experience their food without touching it.  Eating with one’s hands can be a very sensual, spiritual, fulfilling, and connected experience!
    • If you’re eating with a loved one, try feeding one another, touching the food, and placing it in the other’s mouth.  The focus of this becomes indulging in the flavors and senses, instead of mindlessly gorging yourself on food.  And admit it, a sexy lady eating with her hands is a pretty hot image…  Use it as a way to feel confident and sexy in front of your partner!
    • If you’re eating alone, well in that case there is no one watching!  Go ahead and eat with your hands, savor the feeling of the food in your hands.  Feeding yourself this way is an ultimate act of self-love.
  • Smell: Well this one is a no-brainer when it comes to eating, yet it is so often neglected.  Smelling your delicious and well-prepared food before you eat it has both practical and sensual benefits.  First of all, it starts to prepare your body for food… You begin to salivate and your digestive enzymes get ready to secrete.  This aids enormously in your digestive process, and can help combat over-eating, and make a meal so much for satisfying.  It’s also very beneficial psychologically.  The smell of delicious food is warming, comforting, and can be a huge boost to serotonin levels… It can literally make you feel happier!
    • Obviously, a home-cooked meal is the best way to engage your sense of smell before and during eating.  But even if you are eating out or ordering in, take a moment to observe and smell your food before eating it.  If it doesn’t smell mouth-watering, you shouldn’t be eating it!!  This is a great way to put more thought into what you put in your body!
  • Taste:  Clearly, this sense is the most obvious when it comes to eating, but also, one we often neglect when we are rushing through a meal or eating something blah just to eat.  Every single thing we eat should taste vibrant and amazing.  And we need to take the time to taste it at every meal.  This means slowing downchewing your food, and, again, putting care into what you are eating.
    • Opt to chew every mouthful until the consistency of the food in your mouth is soupy.  I know that doesn’t sound very appetizing, but when you’re eating delicious food, taking the time to enjoy every bite, letting the flavors meld together is a wonderfully sensual process.  It is also incredibly good for your health, and super beneficial to looking your slimmest.  Chewing your food takes the strain off your digestive system and breaks down everything you are eating, speeding up the process of extracting all the nutrients and getting it out of you.
    • Secondly, and just as importantly, taking the time to really taste and enjoy each bite of your food allows you to indulge in those forbidden treats every once in a while and really make it count!  Having a small slice of chocolate cake and really taking the time to slowly indulge and enjoy it makes the whole endeavor so much more meaningful, and helps you feel more satisfied… therefore allowing you to need those indulgences less often!
To go even further in the work of using our senses to achieve maximum health, beauty, and sexiness, I am teaming up with pilates instructor and movement coach, Flavia Bruni of Tools for Grace, so create a dynamic workshop focusing on eating, movement, grace, and sensuality… Just in time for Valentine’s Day!  RSVP today to reserve your spot!

5 Ways to Sneak in Exercise over Thanksgiving!

By: Natasha Uspensky, CHHC 
5 Ways to Sneak in Exercise over Thanksgiving! | The Organic Beauty Blog
If you’re anything like me, going home for the holidays can mean a complete derailing of all health-related activities.. Wouldn’t it be great to find ways to sneak in some exercise over Thanksgiving with the whole family by doing everyday activities that burn off those holiday calories, get your heart pumping, and get everyone moving!

1. Rake the leaves!

This fall chore is actually a great workout! Get the family outside and start raking… You’ll work up a sweat, get some cardio, and have a great time!  Try to lunge forward with every pull of the rake, and make sure to alternate your dominant hand.  This will work your arms, abs, and legs and will burn about 250 calories in an hour!

2. Shovel some snow!

If you’re in the midwest, chances are there is more snow to deal with than leaves…  Shoveling snow is an amazing resistance workout, and can turn into a really fun family activity!  The motions of pushing, pulling and lifting the shovel work the back, abs, arms, and legs!

3. Clean house!

Transforming into Cinderella before and after the big Thanksgiving get together can feel like a tedious chore, but if you think about it in terms of exercise, mopping, sweeping, dusting, and vacuuming can burn some major calories!  Throw in some lunges while you mop the floor, calf raises while you clean the counter, and squats as you move furniture or pick things up and you’re burning over 200 calories an hour.

4. Play some football!

This venerable American turkey day tradition is probably one of the best things you can do for your body before or after the big meal.  Get outside, run around, break a sweat and offset those Thanksgiving calories.  Not a football family?  A game of tag, capture the flag, or even just catch will do the trick!

5. Go for a walk (and bring your pooch)!

After dinner, grab the whole fam and the dog and go for a walk.  Walking after a big meal is a great way to stimulate digestion and get things moving.  If you keep a brisk, steady pace, you’ll burn up to 250 calories in an hour!  And the fresh air is a welcome break after having been inside for a few hours.  Mom (or whoever cooked) will appreciate the change of scenery!

Spring Detox: Shed Winter Weight and Get Your Energy Back!

Spring Detox | The Organic Beauty Blog

I’ve written a lot about the benefits of seasonal cleansing, but it being spring, I want to go into a little more depth about the importance of getting your system detoxified and cleaned out after a long winter.  Basically, if you’re only going to do one cleanse a year, this is the time to do it.  If you’re up to doing a more intensive cleanse, check out my article on how to detox and cleanse the right way. For those who aren’t quite ready to go all out, you can reap a lot of the benefits of a detox just by consciously incorporating cleansing, seasonal spring foods into our diets to reverse the effects of winter.

In the winter months, our bodies naturally crave more warming, protein-rich, heavier foods that insulate us (physically and even psychologically) against the cold, comfort us, and provide an additional boost to our immunity to keep us healthy.  Often times, those foods cause us to gain a bit of winter weight (which is totally normal, and can even be healthy!)…  However, come spring, our bodies have an innate need to shed that weight, detoxify the organs from the heavier winter diet, and get light and healthy for spring.  Spring’s harvest provides us with all of the foods to start making this happen:  astringent bitter greens and roots, antioxidant berries, and super nutrient-rich sprouts, which all serve as an antidote to the heavier vegetables, grains, and in some cases meat and diary that we’ve been consuming all winter.  The spring is a time of rejuvenation and cleansing in nature, and it has the same purpose for the human body: to detoxify the system and to reset our ability to burn fat.

In early spring, animals are naturally drawn to eating more bitter roots that serve to cleanse the intestines of built up mucus from our winter diets.  We, too, should focus on incorporating spring’s root vegetables into our diets for this same purpose.  As we transition out of the the colder months, we should eat more celeriac, beets, new potatoes, radishes, turnips, jicama, and fennel, which are all super cleansing and break down our intestinal mucosa.  You can supplement and intensify this effect with dandelion root tea, which also has a detoxifying effect, particularly on the liver.  Make sure to up your water intake during this period, and cut down (if not completely eliminate) heavy foods rich in mucous like dairy, oily or fried foods, processed sugars or artificial sweeteners, and anything overly salty.  In addition to gently cleaning out your intestines and detoxifying your organs, you will also be eliminating excess water weight from winter.

Once you’ve begun to clean out your intestines, the next step is to fertilize your gut with healthy bacteria.  Having the proper balance of intestinal flora is vital for proper digestion (and elimination), which is what keeps old, stagnating food from getting stuck in your system and causing bloating, weight gain, and a whole mess of other unpleasant digestive issues.  Luckily, mid-spring provides us with a bounty of delicious and astringent leafy greens and sprouts that refertilize your gut and also make up a perfect light, low-fat seasonal diet.  As you move into April/early May, try to comprise as much of your diet as possible of watercress, baby spinach, dandelion greens, chicory and endive, as well as bean and alfalfa sprouts which are all super high in nutrients and full of healthy flora.  These light, fresh and springy foods are the perfect antidote to slow, heavy and cold winter foods, and will do remarkable things to your body and your energy levels.

The last step to a super effective, spring detox is to flush out the lymphatic system.  Lymphatic stagnation is something that effects most of us year round, but can have the most profoundly negative effects as we come out of the winter months.  Chronic colds, weak immunity, sore joints, weight gain, headaches, depression, and low energy are all symptoms many experience during the winter months, and a lot of them are due to our impaired ability to flush out toxins and fat through our lymphatic system.  Late spring provides us with the perfect harvest of berries to get our lymphatic system moving again, and flush out all the toxins we have dislodged from our intestines and internal organs.  Once the weather begins to warm and the berry season starts, we can start eating tons of seasonal cherries, raspberries, blueberries and strawberries to flush out our newly balanced intestines destagnate our lymphatic system.  As this flushing occurs, energy levels soar, immunity is boosted, and we can say goodbye to sniffles, sore joints, aches and pains.

The seasons provide us with ways to cleanse our system, maintain healthy weight, and be in our best health possible.. all it takes is some intuition to eat what is seasonally available at the time when it is offered by nature.  By taking the time to reset our digestion and metabolism in the spring months, we are able to recharge our ability to burn fat and detoxify our organs naturally, without having to take extreme measures or go on difficult deprivation diets.  Spring’s harvest features the year’s most potent toolkit of foods to get our bodies on track for maximum health.  It is the most vital time for cleansing and gives us the easiest set of directions to follow to lose weight, gain energy, and clean out our bodies.. Just by eating what the season gives us!

For a convenient chart of spring’s seasonal foods, see Dr. John Douillard’s Spring Grocery List

SaveSave

To Snack or Not to Snack: That is the Question

 

Snacking has become kind of a hot topic in the world of nutrition, and with good reason.  For many years now, the diet books and the fitness world in particular have been promoting the concepts of “grazing,” “snacking,” or eating several small meals throughout the day as opposed to the traditional 3 squares.  At first, it seemed like the answer to all our problems.  Hypoglycemia (or blood sugar issues) was on the rise in addition to the frightening prevalence of obesity.  Even otherwise healthy people who watched what they ate and stuck to their diets were struggling with weight that was fluctuating more than was normal or desirable.  When the merits of several small meals started to be touted in the media and in new diet books, it seemed like an easy, fun cure-all:  Eat all the time and still lose weight!  Never get shaky or experience symptoms of low blood sugar again!  Never go hungry!  The logic behind it seemed very solid.  If we never let ourselves get to the point of extreme hunger, we will make better choices about what we eat (and how much) and our blood sugar will stay stable with a steady stream of fuel to burn.  Feeding your metabolism all the time keeps it humming and burning fat, right?

Apparently, wrong. 

Continue Reading…

How to Detox or Cleanse the RIGHT Way

What Is Detoxing?

Regardless of how well we eat and how much we minimize our exposure to harmful toxins, our bodies can derive a whole lot of good from a detox or cleanse that is approached responsibly.  Toxins can build up in our livers, kidneys, and digestive tracts, leading to a whole slew of uncomfortable phenomena:  fatigue, constipation, skin breakouts, low libido, premature aging, and weight gain… not to mention far worse, long-term effects like lowered immunity, liver toxicity, and, yes, the big C.

The practice of detoxifying the body is an ancient one, from the ancient Greek and Roman concepts of “autointoxication,” to the ritual fasts that are a part of nearly every single documented religion (used for both spiritual and health benefits).  Today, we know more about the effects of these practices, and have honed in on methods that are less extreme, but equally beneficial, and can fit into our busy, everyday lives.  Cleanses can vary in intensity from juice fasts, to raw food diets, to taking special supplements to detoxify various organs.  Here are the easiest and healthiest ways to detoxify and cleanse your system, from least to most intensive.

Continue Reading…

The Magic of Apple Cider Vinegar

By: Natasha Uspensky, CHHC

Get this… what common ingredient in your kitchen cupboard can accomplish all of the following:

  • Relieve gastrointestinal discomfort
  • Help with weight loss
  • Stabilize blood sugar
  • Cure acid reflux and indigestion
  • Prevent and heal acne, eczema and dermatitis
  • Cure allergies
  • Get rid of warts
  • Improve overall immunity
  • Detoxify the body
  • Slow the aging process
  • Make hair shiny and full
  • Relieve seasonal allergies
  • Cure a sore throat

Organic Apple Cider Vinegar!!  Amazing, right?  How does it manage to be such a miraculous cure-all?  Well, the acetic acid in apple cider vinegar helps your body metabolize fat and stabilize blood sugar.  Its high content of over 50 vitamins, amino acids, enzymes, and minerals in very specific combination do wonders for your body, while its antiseptic, anti-fungal and antimicrobial qualities help heal skin problems and ward off illness.

Continue Reading…

Ladies, Lay off the Fries and Chips!

A new study in the British Journal of Cancer found that acrylamide, the chemical that is released when starchy foods (particularly potatoes) are fried at high temperatures, is associated with an average of 40% greater risk of breast cancer among pre-menopausal women.  So not only do fried foods pile on the pounds, make your skin breakout, and increase your risk of heart disease, they now officially cause cancer as well…  Think about it… are those Fritos really worth that much risk?

SaveSave