Posted in Tips and Tricks on Jun 10th, 2008
Sleep: A Necessity, Not a Luxury
The pace of life gets faster and faster, and people try to cram more and more into every minute of the day. As things get more hectic, sleep tends to get short shrift. It’s seen as wasted time, lost forever.
“For healthy people, there’s a big temptation to voluntarily restrict sleep, [...]
Posted in Robert Atkins, M.D., Tips and Tricks on Jun 6th, 2008
Here it is, as simple as we can make it: When you eat too many carbohydrates (carbs), your body burns some of those carbs for energy and stores the excess carbs as fat. When you eat fewer carbs – especially white flour and sugar, your body begins burning fat as it’s primary fuel source.
That’s how [...]
Posted in Tips and Tricks on Jun 6th, 2008
1. Understand what you are eating
Posted in Advice and Thoughts, Pierre Dukan, M.D. on Jun 3rd, 2008
Indeed, it has been proven that 100 calories coming from sugar, oil or seafood are not treated the same by our bodies. Calories are coming from 3 distinct nutriments.
Refined sugars and its pairs, sweets, candies… are almost pure carbohydrates, rich and quickly assimilated by our bodies. Starches, even if they don’t taste as sugary, are extremely rich in carbohydrates. Starches includes breads, crackers, cereals, pasta, potatoes, lentils, beans… Bananas, grapes and cherries are among the fruits with the most carbohydrates. Obviously wine and all alcohols are not your friends there.
Carbohydrates provide 4 calories per grams directly assimilated.
Lipids are definitely your enemies. There are 2 main sources of lipids: animal and vegetal. You’ll find them typically in their almost pure stage in delicatessens, pate, sausages and so on, but also in the meat, like lamb, goose and duck. Beef is normally way leaner. Vegetal lipids are mainly found in oils (olive, sunflowers, peanuts etc).
Lipids provide 9 calories per grams that get assimilated slightly slower than carbohydrates.
Proteins are mainly coming from animals and most specifically their meat. Horse meat contains the most protein. Beef meat, although slightly fattier, are extremely good sources of proteins. Again, lamb, pork, goose and duck have too much lipids to be considered a good source of protein. All the seafood, fishes, shrimp, crab, scallops are very lean and with a good amount of proteins. Eggs are good although, ideally, you should eat only the white…yuck
Proteins provide 4 calories per grams that get assimilated very slowly (at least 3 hours).
Because of the protein molecules size, our body needs to spend some energy to digest them. Typically, to extract 100 calories out of proteins, our body has to spend 30 calories (vs 12 calories for the lipids and 7 calories for the carbohydrates). Also, take into consideration that only 50% of the proteins are really assimilable, the rest is pure waste. So a 100g beef steak will provide only 200 calories (100g * 4 cal * 50%) that will require 60 calories to get assimilated…hence your net calories intake will be only 140 calories….which is the equivalent of a spoon of olive oil that we’re pouring so easily onto our salads…
Calories intakes (100g)
Calories assimilated (100g)
Calories diet efficiency (100g)
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Posted in Tips and Tricks on May 31st, 2008
Foods to avoid
Generally speaking, try to avoid foods that have been highly processed, as they are less nutritious and healthy, but they also contain the things our body doesn’t need or want – sugars, saturated fats, sodium, and preservatives.
Fat by itself isn’t bad for our bodies or health, as it is found in [...]
Posted in Tips and Tricks on May 28th, 2008
The holidays are synonymous with an abundance of rich foods and overindulgence. During this time, most health-conscious people strive to maintain their weight because dieting is practically impossible. In fact, the average American typically gains between one and five pounds between Thanksgiving and New Years.
Keep a food journal over the holidays.
Write down what you eat [...]
Posted in Tips and Tricks on Apr 4th, 2008
The main summer diet information on this site contains virtually everything you need to know to effectively lose weight for a beach-ready body but there are a few handy diet tips for the summer that don’t neatly fit in anywhere else on this site – so I’ve lumped them all together here [...]
Posted in Tips and Tricks on Apr 4th, 2008
Getting into your summer wardrobe, just like moving house, tends to be one of those situations most people make plans for. For a month we are letting people know that we are going to start a low calorie diet. It might be you love your final final sausage roll and you prepare [...]
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