Staying hydrated is an important aspect to our overall well being. If we are even slightly dehydrated it can be detrimental to our health. It can also make us feel very tired and run down. If you are overweight, you are most likely to be dehydrated.

Fruits and most greens contain a high percentage of water and if our diet contained lots of these foods additional water needed would be kept to a minimum. Sadly however, this isn’t the case. The majority of the Western world consumes far too little water-dense whole foods and too much dehydrated refined junk foods.

By nature, we are not water drinkers, so getting most of our water needs from fruits and greens is important. There is no firm reason why we should drink 8 glasses of water a day and should only drink when thirsty. This shouldn’t arise very often if we are consuming the fruits and greens our body needs.

No hard and fast rules can be set down when it comes to the matter of water. You can faithfully drink 8 glasses a day and be getting too much water or too little, maybe. If you are wise, you will listen to your body’s requirements.

It is often said that our body needs minimum amount of water per day and we should attempt to drink this amount each time. This isn’t necessarily something I would agree with following. Unless you body is telling you you are thirsty then don’t drink water for the sake of drinking it. Drinking too much water can be damaging to your health as well as too little.

However that being said, for the majority of us, our thirst mechanism isn’t usually working so well and for some of us we can’t even make the distinction between being hungry or being thirsty. We become dehydrated without even realizing it.

Here are some possible signs that you could be dehydrated:

Lack of energy & fatigue
Migraine headaches
Dandruff

Apathy
Salty sweat
Irritability and mild depression
Low back pain
Dry mouth
Dry and flaky skin
Weakness
Excessive sleepiness
Constipation

Chronic Dehydration

Dr. Fereydoon Batmanghelidj, author of Your Body’s Many Cries For Water, claims that many of our health problems are a result of dehydration. He claims that chronic dehydration can cause many conditions including asthma, allergies, arthritis, migraines, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression etc.

I must say, having suffered from asthma and allergies once upon a time, I can see how being dehydrated may have affected those things in me. Since I upped my intake of fruits and greens (water-dense foods) my asthma and allergies have COMPLETELY disappeared. Water, or lack of, could have potentially be an irritant to my asthma/allergies.

Drinking more water will most likely not hurt you if you aren’t someone very familiar with your thirst signals and who doesn’t eat a lot of water dense fruits. In fact it can only help you. Whether you need 8 glasses is largely debateable on the premise of individual differences, so don’t worry if you aren’t consuming that many.

The best things you can to increase your water intake is:

Cut out other drinks.

Soda, Alcohol, Coffee are all dehydrating and should not be included in your add up of how much water you have consumed. Instead of drinking these, make an effort to only consume water as a drink through out the day. If you have any of the other drinks, drink twice as much water to make up for it.

Up your intake of fruits and greens.

This is one of the best things you can do. By getting a lot of water from the foods you eat means you have to worry less about how much water you are drinking.

What do you do to stay hydrated?

Previous Post: Superfoods Diet: Gree Superfood Supplements Not So Super

Superfoods are a hot topic in the world of health and are increasing touted as being among the healthiest food sources available. The term superfood is usually used to describe any food with a high concentration of phytonutrients. Phytonnutrients are celebrated for their health promoting benefits by many health food companies and researchers.

Superfoods include berries, leafy greens, sprouts, bee pollen, aloe vera, raw cacao (if you can call it “raw”), gogji berries, flax seeds and many others.

I don’t have a problem really with berries or leafy greens. In fact I really feel that we all need to be consuming lots of leafy greens in our diet and plenty of fruits. So if you desire berries, go for it and eat lots of them (I currently have a major love for blueberries!). When we take those superfoods and ground them down into a powder or a pill form, that’s when I have an issue.

Green superfoods or green powders have received a lot of attention in the past few decades; specifically green superfoods such as spirulina, blue green algae and chlorella. I was even suckered into buying some green blue algae at one point in my life, believing it would was beneficial and necessary for health. I am not saying they can’t be beneficial but I do not think they are necessary for a healthy lifestyle.

Superfoods, along with vitamin supplements (more on this in another post), are recommended regardless of what diet we are on, to make up for nutritional inadequacies but claims for superfoods are ridiculous and scientifically false.

If you are eating a diet with an abundance of fresh whole fruits, vegetables and leafy greens, getting plenty of exercise, plenty of sleep, sunshine and fresh air and leading a healthy lifestyle, you do not need to supplement with anything, including superfoods.

If you do not live this way, simply supplementing or eating “superfoods” isn’t the answer and isn’t going to be helpful in the long run.

Any food that has had its water removed, its fiber removed and vital components stripped out is not a whole food let alone a health food. Concentrated vitamins out of the ratio that nature intended in whole fruits and vegetables aren’t healthy either. Not to mention when one removes the water from food, the oxidation process destroys many of the remaining nutrients, making them far less nutritious than they were in a whole state.

We do not need them and we are the only creatures on the earth to grind things into dried powders and pills and think we will benefit from them and even call them superfoods. On top of this supplementation really is only necessary under some circumstances.

Dr. Joel Fuhrman (a nutrition expert and practising physician) recommends supplements in some circumstances, but agrees that they can be dangerous. He states in his book Eat to Live:

“A high intake of just one nutrient when nature has combined it with many others may make things worse, not better. We humans, especially physicians, are notorious for interfering with nature, thinking we know better. Sometimes we do- all too often we don’t.

Only later, when it is often too late, do we realize that in fact we have made things worse. While it still may take decades longer to understand how whole foods promote health, we must accept the fact that the foods found in nature are ideally suited to the biological needs of the species.“

Dr Doug Graham (author of the 80/10/10 diet and Grain Damage) also believes supplementation may be necessary in some cases during the initial stages of lifestyle change and “would be done solely to allow time for the benefits of correct living to accrue or for extenuating circumstances to pass”.

The amount of nutrients we require are far less than medical advice allows us to believe. High fat and low raw food diets mean we absorb very small amounts of nutrients from the food we eat, making it seem as though we need more of them, when really we need to change the way we eat to a low fat, high raw diet.

Correcting one’s lifestyle, consuming lots of fruits and vegetables and cutting down our fat intake is key to improving absorption and utilization of nutrients and health.

Save Your Money for Fruit and Greens: Avoid Superfood Supplements!

Anyone endorsing superfoods, trying to sell to you the latest scientific breakthrough, is only after your money and isn’t concerned about your health.

Superfoods are an expensive waste of time and money. Do yourself a favor and use the money you would have spent on superfoods and use it to buy some fruit and vegetables – you will be MUCH better off.

I just came across an article on nytimes.com which I agree with quite a bit.

It’s general underlying statement is really that we shouldn’t be so hung up on the organic thing, we should first be making sure we are eating better.  I couldn’t agree more, especially when the article says “we get 7% of our calories from soft drinks, more than we do from vegetables“.

Although it would be great if everyone was eating organic, growing our own vegetables and thinking about our impact on the earth, some of us aren’t in a position to do any of those things and even if we were, the first focus of a healthy eating and living lifestyle should be to make sure we are eating fruits and vegetables, regardless of whether they are organic or not. 

When we are at a point of being able to say to ourselves we have a balanced, nutritious diet full of fruits and vegetables, then we can start addressing the issue of organic or homegrown produce.

If non-organic is all we can afford while we make a transition to a higher fruit/vegetable diet than we shouldn’t worry too much about pesticides and airmiles (until we are in a more stable position with our eating habits to take it on) because it is a MUCH better improvement than the hormones and toxins that are in the meat we eat.  Cutting down on meat and consuming more fruits and vegetables is a great start but we can overcomplicate it at first if we focus on the wrongs things.

Our health should come first, then the environment.  Once we are able to take care of ourselves and nourish our bodies, we can then take care of the environment and make better choices for the world we live.

So if you aren’t a big fruit or vegetable eater work on that first.  Then work on whether you want to switch to organic or homegrown food.

Full article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/weekinreview/22bittman.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Health Quote of the Day

I can’t seem to lose the weight despite continuous efforts to do so; I just keep craving and bingeing…

Food cravings are one of the subtle, cultured forms of addiction and compulsive behavior that are very difficult to discern.  It is acceptable to have an addiction when it comes to food, or so it seems.  We all have them and we all treat people with this particular addiction (addiction to food) entirely different to someone who is addicted to alcohol or other drugs.

Where as someone who craves alcohol would be encouraged to seek help, those of us who crave sugary snacks are often – if not all the time – encouraged to indulge in our addictions.  And if we don’t indulge we will often hear the retort:

“Why are you depriving yourself?”

“A little isn’t going to hurt!”

Can you honestly say that the foods you crave are not addictions?

Most foods that are craved have no nutritional benefit to you and can cause and contribute to a number of different health conditions including excess fat, diabetes, heart disease etc.

Why would you want to eat these foods other than for comfort and pleasure?  You wouldn’t.  It is your addiction to them that makes you eat them.

Food has the power to control you in this way.  Sugar, salt and foods laced with fat are emotionally and physically addictive.  In order to rid yourself of these substances from your life, the first step is to admit there is a problem.  This is one of the hardest things to do, especially when you think you are eating that sandwich out of hunger.

But cravings are a bent form of hunger and it is quite possible that you may have never felt what true hunger feels like.  You are probably used to the unger that gets your stomach growling, that makes you feel agitated and that resultings in your needing food right then and there.

This is not hunger – it is addiction.

Addiction is anything that has become stronger than your willpower to change.

Bread, sweets, coffee, meat and salt among a million other foods, provide you with false needs and behavior patterns that are destructive to your well being and can have a greater authority in behavior than the natural desire to eat and drinnk.  The salt, fat and crunch of junk food offer emotionsl of fulfillment that are lacking because of a spritiual vacuum – a feeling deep down inside that something is missing.

Emotional emptiness is the source of addiction in most cases – dependency on pleasure to temporarily numb our feelings of hopelessness is usually the root issue.

The sensations of hunger and thirst are homeostatic mechanisms which help the body maintain optimum levels of energy, nutrients and water.  When addictive foods are eaten repeatedly, the body adjusts homeostasis to be balanced with the food in the system.  Over time the body will become dependent on that substance for homeostatic balance and its removal will cause withdrawal.  The body cries out for the missing substance as just intense hunger cries for food.

Control has been established on the inside of you.  Even if there is an intense desire to lose weight there is often failure and discouragement.

But how did it all come about?

The potential and most likely start of food addiction is from the moment you were born.  Living in a society that deems food as a social function and emotional poise it can be hard not to associate food with emotion/feelings (whether they are good or bad).

This would seem to suggest that we are all addicted to food and I would say we are to some extent. However, not everyone has a problem with food.

Some people overuse this method of consuming food at an emotional/social event, pushing it into every aspect of their lives. It may have started with an upset in childhood, where your mother gave you some cookies or cake to make you feel better, and as you grew you began to use this comfort as a way of easing your pain whenever pain arose. You went through your teens with the usual social awkwardness and pubescent pains and food was your way to make it easier. You then went onto college and a stressful job and the only comfort you had was food. Your days revolved around you coming home from work and comforting yourself with a takeaway or something else. It was your little treat.

Unfortunately this is an all too common scenario for people and a lot of people do not recognize they have an issue and if they do have some awareness, they do not take it seriously because the world doesn’t take it seriously. The world does not recognize it as an addiction.

Overeating is a powerful way to change the state of your mind. Eating is a way to silence the mind.

The compulsion to eat sets up a very painful process. It makes one feel weak and out of control. It prevents many from successfully losing weight and eating a healthy diet, because the endless slip ups and indulgences into junk food for comfort can leave one in a very low insecure place.

Emotional eaters have a dependency on food to get through life – to survive challenges. Many of us are emotional eaters. We avoid emotion, we avoid allowing emotion to flow through us and instead we void it by numbing it. This doesn’t work though, because that pain is still there, we have just put it off.

Emotional eating is instant gratification and short lived, but it is a very hard thing to break free from. However, to be able to control our eating, to lose weight and to live a fulfilling satisfying life, it is crucial that emotional eating is addressed.

Emotions aren’t something one should fear, we should embrace every one that we feel and experience and that’s just it: we should allow ourselves to feel and experience them. The more we do so, the better we are able to manage them and more able e are to cope in stressful situations in the world. The world will also be a much more interesting place and wonderful place.

We need to make peace with our food and we need to allow ourselves to be happy. You can beat your addictions, you can break your reliance on food and the first step to do so is to be aware of your reliance.

Some questions to think about concerning your own emotional eating:

(Being aware of the following questions throughout the course of a day can help you better answer them)

1. Emotional eating is one aspect of food addiction. What other aspects of food addiction are present in your life? For example, being overweight is a sign of food addiction just like emotional eating. Can you pinpoint any others?
2. Have you been on diets before and if so what has made you break them? How did you feel before and after breaking your diet? Did breaking your diet give you relief? Was it stressful to be on a diet that prevented you from using food as a comfort?

For more information on how to overcome cravings click here

The Social & Emotional Aspects of Eating Video

Part One: Introduction to Emotional Eating

Part Two: What Fuels Emotional Eating

This is a video of a talk by Professor Rozalind Gruben/Graham on the social and emotional aspects of eating.  It is a great introduction to the social and emotional aspects and I wholeheartedly recommend you watch it (along with the other parts to it). 

Here is part one:

Positive Affirmations: A Great Way to Start Your Day

I thought I would share this video of positive affirmations.  Waking up and watching this video is a great way to start your day and gets you in a good positive mood.  Enjoy

Health Quote of the Day

The fuel to emotional eating is emotional hunger. Unfortunately, no matter what you do, you will always have emotional hunger. It is what makes us human but this doesn’t mean we have no hope of dealing with it. The emotional hunger isn’t the problem; it is how you deal with it that really counts.

At the moment, the only way you may know how to deal with emotions is to eat or you may be the type who uses food on certain occasions to deal with an emotion. You may even be someone who doesn’t think they use food for comfort but doesn’t really know if they do or not.

For me, I was really unaware of the way I used food for comfort. When I started stripping my diet down and eating low fat foods, I really started to see that I did use food for emotional comfort and a LOT of the time too. I still have moments now where I struggle to keep awareness of my feelings. I am lucky though to have some great support through it.

When you eat for emotional reasons, you can become so attached to dealing with the ups and downs of life with food that any suggestion that you can actually stop this makes you nervous. In Part One: An Introduction to Emotional Eating I mentioned people going into a blind panic and bingeing, this is what I am talking about here. You are dependent on food for comfort. It is like security to you, no wonder it makes you nervous if that was to be taken away! Many people simply cannot imagine being able to handle a bad day without food there for comfort.

When you are an emotional eater, you really do feel truly hungry and when the craving grips you, you can’t tell its not really hunger. People who are not emotional eaters usually eat less when they are troubled by emotion hunger. Their emotional hunger doesn’t feel like physical hunger.

Emotional hunger and the feeling that you are truly hungry, has so much power over you that it drives you to go to almost any lengths to satisfy it. Have you driven to the store late at night just to get some junk food?

There is such power in emotional hunger that if you do not deal with the underlying issues to it, you will always be at its mercy. It will control you.

Some signs of emotional hunger:

• It results from something emotionally upsetting.

• It has a quick onset. It comes on rapidly.

• It demands food immediately.

• It doesn’t notice how why or what is being eaten.

• It can even demand more food even after a person is stuffed.

• It demands particular foods to be fulfilled (like cake and chocolate).

If you are compelled to eat in this way and cannot be patient, then you know it is most likely an emotional issue you are dealing with.

Are you an emotional eater? Do you feel compelled to eat in stressful situations?

Below I have put together some questions you may want to take the time to answer if you feel that you could be an emotional eater. These will help you get a better understanding of yourself and your eating.

• Is it hard for you to see emotional eating in your life?How hard do you find it to see it?Describe the instances where you think you emotionally eating.Do you think that this is an obstacle to your weight loss?

• Do you think you can tell the difference when you are experiencing emotional hunger versus physical hunger?

• Have you ever mistake emotional hunger for physical hunger? Do you eat out of boredom for example? Has it become such a habit that only on reflection you can see what you are doing, as opposed to in the moment it happens?

• Why do you think you use food rather than address the emotion directly? Do you always use food to deal with emotions?

Activity: During your day be more aware of your eating habits and notice when you eat out of true hunger versus emotional hunger. Note down whether your feelings on this. Were you surprised at how much you used it to numb yourself?

For A Complete Guide on Cravings Click Here

Part One: Introduction to Emotional Eating

Part Three: Food Addiction & Its Origin

For many people, simply following a balanced diet and exercising is not enough to lose weight. Many find it impossible to stick to a diet and to control what they are eating, despite their best efforts. Maybe you are one of these people?

You already know how to lose weight – you know you must eat more nutritionally but you seem to slip up at every turn. So what is getting in your way?

The answer is most likely a mix of physical addiction to food and emotional eating. Emotional eating is the hardest part to overcome and is what I will discuss below (physical addiction will be discussed in a later blog post).

The thing I have found is that a lot of the information available out there (including diet programs) is that they do not addresss this issue and if they do, they just touch on it.

However this issue is a big one and can stand in the way of someone achieving the healthy lifestyle changes they want. Especially if you are following a diet that restricts you in anyway. For some this can lead to a blind panic and before you know it you will have just engulfed a large chocolate cheesecake and will still be wanting more.

Food is a security blanket for many and to be restricted can make us feel vulnerable and exposed, even if we aren’t completely aware of it (which we usually aren’t because by the time we have become rational again, after a good old binge, we are too numb to feel anything).

What is emotional eating?

Emotional eating means to eat to satisfy emotional hunger. You eat food for comfort or a way to help you cope in life. You eat for reasons other than nutritional.

We all do this. Emotional eating is part of our culture. We use food to celebrate, to deal with upset, to deal with a hard day at work and even boredom (ever sit in front of the TV eating mindlessly?) It is a part of our culture. The problem with this is, it isn’t really seen as a problem in society, but it is one.

We spend so much time numbing ourselves, that when we do not have an opportunity to do so, we don’t know how best to deal with the emotions that arise in us. Food also has physically addictive properties within it that can affect our mood as well (I will discuss this later in a blog post) so everything can be very overwhelming. When we don’t live in the present moment and allow emotions to flow through us, but instead numb ourselves, we carry a lot of baggage around unknowingly. Sometimes this can surface in a bout of aggression or other form. The thing is, if we don’t face it, don’t learn to deal with our emotions then we just continue to live a life of numbing, of bingeing or craving. You miss out on the potential of life, of embracing emotions.

People suffering with this way of eating are driven to eat so they don’t have to face what is bothering them internally. They become addicted to the way they handle life. This is why dieting and calorie restriction doesn’t work. And since most diets do not teach you about emotional eating, we never become fully aware of it and think it is something wrong with us.

If others can do it, why can’t I?

Unless you learn to stop emotional eating and deal with your emotions in the present moment, you will find it impossible to lose weight and keep it off. Not to mention you will find it pretty hard to enjoy life fully if you are constantly battling with this issue with your weight loss.

If this resonates with you, then you are not alone and you can overcome it.

I will be writing about emotional eating this week and next, so stay tuned.

For A Complete Guide on Cravings Click Here

Part Two: What Fuels Emotional Eating

Part Three: Food Addiction & Its Origin

I am currently delving into the world of fasting – juice fasting, water fasting, herb fasting and all the other types of fasting out there. I am curious and interested in whether all those types of fasts out there are beneficial or just someone trying to sell you something. I am also interested in fasting myself if there is some validation in it, after I am done nursing my son. My research is a work in progress but I shall have some blog entries up soon about fasting and its benefits and negatives for health and weight loss. So we shall see if it works out.

Anyway, this morning I came across an article on The Independent website about fasting (water fasting specifically).

According to the article fasting one day a month can provide you with huge health benefits and add years to your life.

Dr Mark Mattson, of the National Institue of Ageing, an American Research body, has done a numerous amount of studies involving rats and mice. He explains that putting mice and rats on fasting diets resulted in the them living longer, developing fewer cancers and showing reduce cognitive decline in aging, compared to animals with continuous access to food.

There have also been some studies with humans that appear to back this up and I certainly have read my fair few stories about the benefits of fasting (water fasting as opposed to others).

The article suggests not only fasting to be beneficial but also calorie restriction to be benficial.

“According to Dr Marc Hellerstein, a professor of endocrinology, metabolism and nutrition at the University of California at Berkeley, our bodies are “brilliant” at reacting to not eating. “We’re not good at responding to too many calories, but we are very good at responding to fasting. Fasting, in itself, is not an unhealthy process.”

The article then goes on to talk about how difficult it can be for one to fast and have the self-control to be able to do so. I agree with this, but only because most of us have physiological addictions to foods that can prevent us from having the self-control we need. If we are binge eating as well, I don’t think fasting would be helpful unless it was supervised, controlled and for a more extended period of time. Once one has done this intitial bout of fasting (to rid ourselves of the physical addiction to certain foods such as sugar, dairy) – adding fasting in once a month may then be plausible and great.

Anyone considering a fast though should get a consultation with a professional to see if they are “suitable” for one. Not everyone is suitable so its worth making sure you are.  You should also do the fast on a day where you can rest as opposed to one where you are running about.  Your body is given digestive rest but it is also beneficial to give complete physical rest too.

I think fasting once a month is a great idea because it can teach us self control and discipline. This is what is often lacking in one’s life who overeats or is overweight, so fasting could be a healthy thing to incorporate in one’s life, ONCE they have started making good progress in their weight loss endeavours.

To read the full article:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/features/the-nofood-diet-1635808.html

Previous Post: Nutritious Snacks: Healthy Snacks for Someone Trying to Lose Weight

I am forever seeing the question “What are some healthy snacks for someone trying to lose weight?”. I have even been asked this question time after time and always answer with the same thing time after time. Unfortunately many seem to be disappointed with the answer but I think this is more due to lack of understanding than not wanting to eat what I suggest.

The answer I give is very simple but is often overlooked because people see this food as insufficient or not filling. So what is it I suggest?

FRUIT!

We have had it drilled into us that it is important to have our 5-a-day. We have had it drilled into us that a fruit snack is something like 1 banana or 1 apple. This is exactly why people do not wish to turn to fruit for snacking purposes. It doesn’t fill us up, it doesn’t provide nutritional satisfaction or emotional comfort.

Fruit is, along with greens, packed full of essentially all the nutrients our body needs, but it is not calorie-dense, so in order to be fulfilled nutritionally we need to be eating much more than 1 banana or 1 apple. Fruit is also not heavy like other foods such as grains and meat, or packed full of addictive substances, so we do not get the emotional fulfilment many of us want from food from fruit. We may not even realize that we want emotional comfort from food. I didn’t realize how much I used food as an aid to emotional issues until I started becoming aware of my eating habits. I still now find it sometimes difficult, but I find comfort in my husband, distraction or exercise.

So how much fruit should we be eating? A lot! If you find yourself hungry, eat 5-6 apples or 5-6 bananas or even more than this (or less) depending on how you feel. Listen to your body and stop eating when you are satisfied. If you incorporate fruits (as well as greens) into your diet more and more, your cravings for unhealthy snacks will decrease and you will feel much better physically and emotionally.

If you are out on the run, and lugging 5 plus bits of fruit about seems a bit big annoyance, take some dates out or maybe some sun-dried fruits. Make sure though that if you take dried fruits out with you, you have plenty of water. Whereas if you have 5 apples, they will help keep you hydrated, you need to replace the water missing from dried fruits with drinking water.

The more fruit you eat the more you will learn to love it and the more you will miss it when you don’t have it. Fruit is very good for you – it will satisfy that sweet tooth for you much better than a chocolate bar or candy will and won’t leave you moody or tired.

Previous Post: Calorie Counting: Determining How Many Calories You Need