Diet Reviews

Mediterranean Diet May Prevent Dementia and Mental Decline

Well, we’ve been hearing more and more about the mediterranean diet, which is a diet that is rich in fruits, vegetables and omega 3 fatty acids, and eschews a lot of animal and dairy protein in favor of plant based proteins and fish.  Just hearing that makes it sound healthy to me.

I think of how much healthier I feel when I’m foregoing a whole lot of red meat and other types of meats, and instead going for plant proteins like hummus, nuts, and whole grains and fish, and it makes total sense to me that this also helps with mental function because when I’m eating a diet that resembles this, I totally feel like I’m on my A game mentally.

Which is why researchers are finding that being on the mediterranean diet actually helps do two things. First, it helps you to stave off mental decline and dementia, and it also helps to increase your mental acuity, your “fastness” and your total brain power, which makes you feel, well just a whole lot smarter and more focused!

People who were on this diet were found to be almost 50% less likely to suffer from dementia and other mental decline symptoms, showing much higher ability to focus and concentrate, and to recall things and think clearly.  This is a huge reason, amongst other benefits like heart disease and stroke prevention and anti cancer properties, that people should really think about trying this type of diet out.

You don’t even have to go 100% on the commercialized version of the mediterranean diet, as long as you follow some semblance of the principles of this type of diet, you should notice a substantial increase in energy, a better ability to focus, accelerated fat loss, lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and a whole bushel of great health benefits that are just waiting to be plucked off the tree for your picking.

Fasting Every Other Day Accelerates Weight Loss?

Fasting has often been a controversial method to achieve a variety of things. Some people fast to help cleanse their system, or detoxify, in fact that may be one of the more popular reasons people do it, or they may fast because they are on a special order from a medical doctor before surgery or some other procedure or test, and lastly, and what we are going to talk about fasting for today, is they do it to actually lose weight, or accelerate their weight loss. Critics say that fasting for weight loss only confuses the body, and can actually do more damage than good when it comes to how your metabolism reacts.

Some believe that fasting actually slows the metabolism down, and may do so permanently, because the body is fooled into thinking it is starving, and therefore it tries like crazy to hold onto the food that it is getting by slowing the metabolism down, or in other words, the rate at which they are processing or using the food up as fuel for the body. I personally have tried fasting before, and it just wasn’t for me. While I can see how some people may like it, I simply couldn’t function the same without the proper nutrition that I’m used to, even when I was on a fast that still provided some kind of nutrients, although only in liquid form, I just couldn’t take the deprivation.

On the other hand, some people think that fasting clears their mind and actually helps them to be productive. I can see how that would be too, because although I had a hard time while fasting, I must say that I didn’t waste any energy on thinking about preparing food, actually preparing it, or wasting time with it, so I did seem to be more productive, maybe to take my mind off of it.

Researchers have now found evidence that fasting every other day, then eating between a few select hours on the days between where the patient actually gets to eat food, actually accelerates the weight loss efforts of obese patients. They found that, at least in obese patients, when the did this fast regimen, they lost weight faster, and seemed to like it better than restricting caloric intake every day they eat, because they knew they could eat what they pleased in those few hours the next day.

Researchers presume that the reason it helps to accelerate the weight loss fairly significantly is that it actually shrinks the stomach faster, so on those off days when fasting isn’t practiced, they are eating less because they feel full faster. That’s definitely interesting, and you may want to look into it more if you happen to be overweight and are looking for other alternatives to traditional dieting that may help you to stay within your guidelines and reach your weight loss goals faster without as much perceived effort of feelings of deprivation.

The No Flour and No Sugar Diet

One of the simplest and easy to follow diets out there is the No Flour, No Sugar Diet. The logic behind it is very basic. The foods that are usually high calorie and lower on actual nutrition are the ones with a high content of these two ingredients. By cutting them out of your eating pattern, weight loss is almost always going to follow.

This diet is recommended by Dr. Peter Gott, the newspaper health columnist. With his No Flour, No Sugar Diet, he does not emphasize counting calories specifically, but he does suggest foods to include more plentifully and which foods to limit. Also mentioned in conjunction with the diet is getting one half hour of exercise per day.

Dr. Gott’s book on the No Flour, No Sugar Diet suggests specific meal plans to cover 14 days and a multitude of tasty recipes that avoid flour and sugar. He gives instructions on how to read food labels and what to look for when selecting your dietary needs. The diet is easy to understand and doesn’t require buying expensive food plans or attending meetings. Among the foods to avoid are wheat flour, corn flour and white flour. For a replacement to the avoided flours, use whole grains, barley, oats, corn tortillas or rice flour. Rice pasta is allowed.

To avoid sugar, read your labels. You want to avoid honey, molasses, maple, cane or beet sugars, fructose syrup, cane juice, glucose and sucrose. If these are in the preparation of a food product, keep it off of your shopping list. As a substitute for sugar and to stay on the diet without feeling deprived, use artificial sweeteners or eat some fresh fruit.

Keep the diet balanced by including whole grains, dairy, vegetables, fruit and meat. Do not exclude any food groups and keep your portions limited and healthy. This will ensure your nutrition level is optimal and keep the longevity of the diet feasible. Exercising regularly is recommended to obtain and maintain your health.

The No Flour, No Sugar Diet won’t promise overnight rapid weight loss. Dr. Gott advises slow steady weight loss at a rate of about a pound a week. If you use this diet as a lifestyle dietary change, you should be able to maintain a healthy weight over time. The diet is similar to the low carbohydrate diet but is more simplified. In general, we do know that avoiding refined flour and sugar are important, but it’s tought to do that at all times, however, if you can just do it the majority of the time, this makes a world of difference in your ease of weight loss and maintenance.

New Review : Caralluma Product

Carallluma fimbriata is another one, like the all too popular hoodia, that is a plant who is from the succulent family. Succulents look like cactuses, or cacti, and I supposed you could call them from the cactus family as well.

Caralluma is a plant that, when ground up and turned into a powder, or shoot, if eaten straight in it’s native land, far far away, will curb your appetite, and can even help to curb your thirst. It is another plant that is used by tribesmen to help stave off their hunger and thirst for longer periods of time so they can get more important things done eating.

Leave it to us diet-obsessed Americans to find these types of miracle plants, and use them as ingredients in diet and appetite suppressing products designed to help us lose weight. Well, that’s exactly what’s been done, and the product I’ve reviewed is Caralluma Burn, which is a pure Caralluma diet supplement that does not contain any of those additives that make you feel like you want to jump out of your own skin like caffeine or any other types of harsh stimulants.

The problem with these types of diet aids that use stimulation as their main way to suppress hunger is that they often leave the person hungrier than they ever were when they wear off. This product is unique in that it does not use any stimulants, as a lot of hoodia products do, to aid you in your strike against hunger to help fulfill your weight loss goals, rather it just uses the power of this unique caralluma plant to ward off hunger and help your blood sugar remain stable for hours on end so that you can begin to burn your calorie stores and reduce your overall weight.

After all, weight loss is by it’s very definition a loss of excess calories, and in order to do that, you have to intake less. Caralluma Burn helps you do that by reducing cravings and appetite. Read on for a full review of the Caralluma product.

What is a “Flexitarian”?

I found this concept to be intriguing, partly because I think it’s kind of how I tend to eat.  You see, I go through periods where the smell and sight of meat, especially red meats, kind of makes me sick.  For example, the other weekend I got some tritip beef and the smell of the raw meat made me just about want to gag. I hated that the cooking of this meat made our whole downstairs smell for hours, and the smell somehow was nauseating to me.  I try to take these kinds of cues from my body as signs that I just shouldn’t eat meat that day.  Some days it might be very appealing, and I’ll opt for that steak though.

The flexitarian diet is basically one that is primarily vegetarian but you can incorporate an animal fat into your diet once daily. As long as it’s a healthy meat preferably. This is a bit different from the typical American diet where people eat meats with almost every meal, for example, some sausage for breakfast, some lunch meat on a sandwich for lunch and some chicken for dinner.  This type of diet can tend to be high in saturated fat and also not easily digestable, putting more strain than necessary on the digestive system and the bowels.

Flexitarians get the best of both worlds without overdoing it in the meat department.  You can eat a vegetarian or vegan meal for breakfast and lunch, and then try a healthy, organically produced meat for dinner, but still watch your portioning, and you may see your signs of health improve because you’ve converted to a mostly plant based diet, whis is excellent because you are getting a lot of phytonutrients, tons of natural chlorophyll and antioxidants, and tons of naturally cleansing and regulating fiber.

Some of the meal ideas you can use are things like brown and wild rice with some avocados and tomatoes chopped over it (one of my faves), maybe a veggie sandwich if you’re at a restaurant, or a salad minus the meat but with a healthy portion of low fat cheese and an olive oil based dressing, a bowl of lentil soup, the possibilities are endless and if you go to a restaurant that caters to vegetarians, then you have all that many more choices.

The DASH Diet

Many Americans have hypertension and need to keep track of it with the help of a physician and often are prescribed medication to control it. From a dietary standpoint, high blood pressure can be brought under control more effectively with nutritional measures combined with specific medications as prescribed. The DASH diet is specifically designed to lower blood pressure. The DASH stands for the Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension. This diet has been proven to lower blood pressure in clinical studies. It is more than the traditional low sodium approach only.

The DASH diet is very high in the fruits and vegetables category. The recommendation calls for 4-6 servings of fruit in addition to 4-6 servings of vegetables per day. On the average, Americans typically eat 2-3 serving of fruits and vegetables combined per day. The DASH diet calls for 8-12 servings of the fruits and vegetables combination daily.

In the grains food group, the DASH diet calls for 6-12 servings for an individual on a 3100 calorie diet per day and 7 to 8 servings for someone on a more calorie restricted diet of 2000 calories per day. At least 3 whole grain foods need to be included in this category per day.

Dairy products need to be low fat or non fat on the DASH diet. Two to four servings of the dairy are recommended on the DASH diet. For lean meats, fish and poultry, the DASH diet recommends 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 servings for the people who are on a 3100 calorie per day diet and 2 or less servings for those who are on a 2000 calorie per day diet.

Nuts, seeds and legumes are more limited on the DASH diet. Three to six per week are recommended for the 3100 calorie per day diet and four to five servings per week for the 2000 calorie per day diet people. While the DASH diet was designed with blood pressure control in mind, often people who are on it have the added benefit of losing weight.

Adherence to the DASH diet provides a high fiber nutrition with low caloric intake and is well balanced. Another added benefit, that was not what the diet was initially designed for, is that it may curb memory loss and help to increase your focus and mental skills.

Liquid and Detox Diets Really Just a Form of Starvation?

I’ve been around long enough, and intuned with the diet and weight loss circuit, to see a lot of fad diets and kind of crazy weight loss theories and diets, and one of the most perplexing to me is the liquid and detox diet, which go hand in hand because a detox diet is usually one that is based in the dieter mostly just drinking some sort of concoction.

I even tried one, the most popular and well known detox diet, called the Master Cleanse, whose instructions come in a neat little pamphlet-like yellow booklet, and instruct the user to prepare a concoction of lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper, and drink only that for days, combined with preparing a salt water internal enema, where you drink warm salt water and basically poop within a half hour, cleansing the intestines and the colon – it’s called something like a “salt water bath”. My boyfriend went on the Mater Cleanse with me, he lasted one day and I lasted three. We hated it to be honest.

I know that they say that after day three is often when you lose any desire for food, but for me quite frankly, I felt that it just wasn’t normal. And for someone who has struggled with eating disorders her whole life and still lives with the demon of bulimia from the past, I felt like not eating was just another (accepted) form of an eating disorder. I hated having to smell people’s lunches and foods when I went out to the mall during that time, and I even suffered through watching my boyfriend eat a piece of pizza since he hopped off the wagon before I did.

Honestly, for the few pounds I would have lost that would have been all water weight anyways – you don’t lose any fat that short term – I just felt that it was sort of a bizarre disguise for a starvation type eating disorder. I know there are some that swear by the health effects of the cleanse, but for me, it just wasn’t the right thing, and I personally believe that you can eat right and cleanse the body through eating, not starvation, better than you can by only consuming liquids and defacating more often, which is what these diets are designed to do for you.

There are some who do the cleanse regularly, a couple times a year, and swear by it, and that’s great for them, but I just don’t think it’s for everyone, and I don’t think that it should be primarily used for weight loss purposes, I think it should be used as more of a cleansing – break from food and it’s trappings sort of thing, otherwise, you’re going to tread in dangerous territory with thinking that this will be a long term weight loss goal getter for you.

Dr. Suzanne Gudakunst Fat Loss Secret : Scam?

Hmm, good question. I came across this Dr’s supposed fat loss secret that has earned her “death threats” – from who, it vaguely even gives the details on that, and is highly doubtful. Who’d want to broadcast it if they really were threatened life and limb because of a supposed “discovery” that the medical establishment didn’t want them to reveal anyways? I’d think if my life were really threatened, I’d want to be a little less conspicuous and not disclose this fact to the public, but hey, that’s just me!

Ok, here’s why I doubt this program is anything totally revolutionary, and maybe I shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, but some warning bells went off when I surfed the website of this fat loss secret plan. Dr. Suzanne Gudakunst, first of all, is a woman who is shown several times on the website, in a cowboy hat and some young looking gear no less, trying to look hip and sexy, which is my first warning sign and which sets off alarms whether this woman is really a Dr. at all to be perfectly honest. I’m not sure what kind of doctor would want to present herself this way, as a brash and low brow salesman.

She goes on and on in sales copy about being thin, sexy, losing weight, and how these worms and other parasites are eating you alive from the inside out, causing disease and premature death, and even going into some unbelievable stories about young, healthy patients of hers that have died out of nowhere only to the puzzlement of their friends and family, seeming to attribute these untimely deaths to an unhealthy colon and digestive system. Hmm, really, because I’d be willing to bet autopsies would show that they dies of some unfortunate disease of sleeper disorder that was never evident until it was too late.

The problem I have with advertising like this is that it really plays on people fears and desires, and gives the reader little substance. For example, I have no idea what her product actually is by reading through the sales copy. Is it a book, a supplement and a book, a DVD? You don’t really know what you’re getting, and it comes in a platinum version which is more expensive, and a regular version as well. So, what more do you get with the platinum version? It doesn’t really say.

She goes on and on about how she “cares about you” also, which seems pretty doubtful considering this sales copy is set to push a product that is poorly communicated. If anyone has any further information, good or bad reviews, please post them here, I’d be open to hear both sides, and I’ll admit I haven’t tried it, so I can’t really give it a review, I can only judge by the cover so far.

What is the “Diet Plate”

There’s a new idea that I’ve always thought would be good, and I was actually surprised no one had put one to market yet, of course at least not that I knew of. But now someone has, and it might just catch on. Except they didn’t originate in America, the diet obsessed land, they put it out in Britain. It’s called the Diet Plate, and for about forty bucks (yikes!), you can purchase the Diet Plate and you get a free diet bowl to go with it. What are they, and how can they help you lose weight?

Well, all the Diet Plate is, is a tool to help you control your portions and take the guesswork out of your portion sizes for various food groups. For example, it has drawn the sizes of protein servings, veggie servings (which happen to be unlimited, so long as they are not in a buttery or creamy sauce of some kind) and last but not least (and unfortunately usually the most fun to eat of the groups, and also the smallest allowance as we all know too well), the carbohydrate group. This last group could be some sort of pasta, a baked potato, or bread of some sort, and of course for diet purposes it’s the smaller portion of the three.

Now, for the free bowl that comes with the Diet Plate, that is used for breakfast cereals, to show you what kind of portion of cereal constitutes a good amount of calories for your breakfast. I’m not sure how many people would actually use that since a lot of people prefer to have things like yogurt, meats and fruits and maybe english muffins or something of the sort for breakfast, but there you have it, and it’s free, so who can complain!

This whole portion control thing is really the key to losing weight, but also I believe that eating the right combinations of foods and what types of starches, veggies, fruits and meats you eat really matters as well, so hopefully the plan and directions that come with explains that some foods may be better choices, regardless of portions, just from a nutritional value and filling value to keep you fuller longer and keep you on your diet.

I always like the unlimited veggies part, but too many times people think that this means they can eat things like creamed spinach or veggies in butter sauces, and that’s not the case. So while portion control is an important part of weight loss and healthy weight maintenance, I think that the types of foods you choose will keep you healthier and on a diet longer because it kicks in your natural appetite suppressants, or on a good eating plan for the rest of your life, whereas low quality foods will just make you hungrier.

Oh, and portion control doesn’t just apply for meals, it of course applies also for snacking throughout the day, which is often forgotten if one is practicing portion control with meals.

Low Carb Diets Good for Focus?

In a study on the benefits and drawbacks of a low carbohydrate diet, it was found that while a low carb diet may be detrimental to your short term memory, it may actually improve your ability to focus more on the task at hand.  Also, diets that have virtually no carbs at all were found to be detrimental to both focus and short term memory, since the brain runs on glucose, and pure protein diets don’t supply enough of this (it’s basically sugar, which is what carbohydrates are converted into when they are digested and absorbed by the body). 

This finding does not surprise me at all, because I have tried low carb diets and also an almost no carb diet (the Atkins diet advocates virtually no carbs, which is a terrible idea because it cuts out almost all fruits and veggies) and I noticed that both my memory and concentration seemed to improve when I was on lower carb diets, like South Beach and The Zone, but when I tried Atkins, I not only had a very short fuse patience wise and got low blood sugar spells almost constantly, but my memory and focus were virtually shot. 

I definitely do not advocate an extreme low carb diet such as Atkins because it cuts out so many of the foods that replenish our vital nutrients, vitamins and minerals, and many meats are devoid of anything but protein and maybe a few trace vitamins.  Also, the Atkins diet is very short on fiber which scares me since diets low in dietary fiber are linked to colon and colorectal cancers, and meat rich diets have also been linked to different types of cancers in both men and women.

Also, high protein, no carb diets do not really discriminate on meats.  As long as it’s a meat, it doesn’t matter, whether it’s a fatty meat like bacon or sausage, or eggs like a big fat honking egg omelette loaded with cheese, as long as that final carb count is low.  This is a terrible way to eat.  Not only will you constantly have a hard time going to the bathroom, but you may very well find yourself in a bad mood most of the time because your blood sugar is so low. 

If you would like to try to cut the carb content down in your diet, you could try a good carb blocker as well.  They act as a high fiber barrier against the absorption of carbohydrates and excess calories, at least that’s the idea of them, so you can read more about those as well if you’re looking for ways to cut the carb content in your diet.