We all enjoy the thought of red wine and dark chocolate being rich in antioxidants and therefore nourishing choices that we can call upon. But maybe now is the perfect time to accept their damaging effects and to turn to good nutrition to support your body through the stress of the economic changes. Whilst good food choices will support your body, poor choices will contribute to anxiety, fatigue, interrupted sleep and depression.

A supportive diet is one that keeps your blood sugar levels even and is rich in anti-stress nutrients. Your foods crutches should therefore nourish you with B vitamins, vitamin C, magnesium and zinc. Your kitchen cupboards should be stocked with wholegrains, beans, seeds and nuts and your fridges filled with fresh fish, fruit and vegetables. Sugary snacks should be replaced with alternatives such as oat cakes with hummus, natural yoghurt with berries or a piece of fruit with a handful of nuts. Instead of seeking a short boost from caffeine or alcohol, now is the time to experiment with roobios, green and herbal teas which are hydrating and wont leave you feeling exhausted.

By making the right food choices and nourishing yourself through the stressful times you can achieve a consistent, high level of energy, reduced anxiety and emotional balance. So, be aware of what crutch you reach for in your hour of need and ask yourself whether it really is supportive. In my mind good health is certainly more luxurious than any chocolate – and affordable too.

Find whether you are eating the right foods and discover practical and achievable dietary changes, with a Diet MOT consultation at The Nutrition Coach. Diet MOT consultations are on special offer at the price of £50.00 until the end of February. Call us on 0845 050 2442 or email angela@thenutritioncoach.co.uk to book your place.

Kate Cook specialises in helping people deal with their diet, stress and digestion so do get in touch.

Look forward to hearing from you!

The Nutrition Coach Team

If you want to lose weight it’s very important to eliminate obvious sugar from your diet. We’re not just talking about obvious forms found in desserts and processed foods, but also to reduce our consumption of hidden ones in foods most of us consider to be healthy. Hidden sugars are also found in carbohydrates such as grains which break down to simple sugars and can contribute to insulin resistance. What is insulin resistance you may ask? Well, the cells in our body need a continuous supply of glucose (or sugar) for their energy requirements. Glucose, however, cannot penetrate the outer membrane of a cell without the assistance of insulin, a hormone which acts as a gatekeeper, allowing glucose to enter cells. Insulin stimulates the body to convert excess glucose (or sugar) which our cells don’t need (i.e. think too much chocolate etc) into fat and then helps to block the breakdown of this stored fat for energy production, making weight loss difficult.

For various biochemical reasons, the body may become less sensitive to its own insulin and compensates by producing more. Higher insulin levels not only make your body store even more fat, it also makes it more difficult to lose weight by blocking the release of fat from the fat cells so it can be burned for fuel. This explains why so many people have problems losing weight.

2. Exercise- high-intensity interval training & weight lifting

High-intensity interval training done 2-3 times weekly can boost your metabolism and increase fat loss, but is also a potent “anti-aging” strategy, as it will naturally increase your body’s production of human growth hormone (HGH).HGH promotes muscle, effectively burns fat and plays an important role in promoting overall health/longevity.

Weight lifting is another essential part of a programme for kick-starting your metabolism. Having more muscle is one of the best ways of burning fat you will ever come across because it helps you burn more calories, without you having to actually “do” more.

This is because muscle is metabolically very active and requires energy just to sit on your frame – even when you sleep. For every pound of muscle that you gain, your body will burn approximately 50-70 calories more per day, and burning more calories leads to a reduction of excess fat.

3.  Are you getting enough sleep?

If you aren’t getting between 7-8 hours of sleep daily, you are disrupting your biological processes, including those regulating your metabolism. Your biological rhythm of sleeping and waking, also known as your circadian rhythm, is intricately tied to your metabolism and cannot be overlooked. In order to maintain a healthy circadian rhythm, it’s important to have consistent regular exposure to day light during the day and sleep in absolute darkness at night. This means turning off all the lights in your room, including night lights and perhaps investing in blackout blinds.

In addition, sleep deprivation has been shown to affect levels of hormones called leptin and ghrelin, which are linked with appetite and eating behavior. When you are sleep deprived, your body decreases production of leptin, the hormone that tells your brain there is no need for more food. At the same time it increases levels of ghrelin, a hormone that triggers hunger. This leads to decreased satiety and increased hunger pangs.

If you would like to know more about combatting Weight Gain & Ageing contact us for further information or check out the brilliant Courses designed to get you fighting on the right track .

Wishing you the best of health

Sylvia

If you want to shape up in a healthy way and keep your New Year’s resolution for longer than a week, don’t make the most common diet mistakes I’ll share with you over the next couple of weeks.

Diet Mistake Number 1: Crash Diets

Yes, it does sound tempting, losing six pounds in four days! If you can stick to that juice or soup or three-bowls-of-cereal-a-day diet for a couple of days, you’ll be even fitter than before Christmas.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work this way. If you follow a crash diet where you cut out major food groups (e.g. carbohydrates or fats) or only concentrate on a small variety of foods, you are not only missing out on vital nutrients for optimum health and well-being, but are very likely to:

a) end up developing cravings for those foods you cut out which probably means you’ll

b) stuff your face uncontrollably in the evening or at night or any social events.

You are also likely to put back on all the weight you lost (and more) when you go back to eating normally (yo-yo affect anyone?). You will also probably be hungry, grumpy, and low in energy most of the time you are following that specific crash diet. And is January not depressing enough as a cold, dark month?

What you might not know is that your body doesn’t realise you are dieting and instead thinks there’s a famine, resulting in your metabolism slowing down based on your calorie intake. This will make it even harder for you to lose the weight and even easier for you to put it all back once you go back to your normal eating behaviour.

The key is to make healthy changes to your diet that will automatically provide you with more nutrients to balance your blood sugar levels and keep your metabolism up. Think swapping your juice for an actual piece of fruit, your sugary cereal for porridge, or your potatoes for brown rice.

My first tip for achieving your New Year’s Resolution: Start a food diary and write down everything you eat and drink throughout the day. It’ll help you to understand your eating behaviours, strengths and weaknesses, and show you where you can make some positive changes in your diet.

Now go out and by that diary! You’ll find them in the sale, and you’ll be surprised at what they uncover.

Here’s to a healthy and happy 2011!

Best wishes,

Lisa

Rehydrate

Alcohol is a diuretic – a chemical that kicks your urinary system into overdrive, and unless you managed to alternate your alcoholic beverages with water in between (which never works does it?), your post-drinking symptoms are most likely due to dehydration. Rehydrating is key when it comes to recovering from a hangover and cannot be stressed enough. But I’m not talking coffee, Red Bull or hair-of-the-dog here. Caffeine is an acknowledged stimulant, and while you might hope caffeine can perform its miracles of giving some much needed focus and alertness, it’s another diuretic. Red Bull isn’t much better (and requires another column), and choosing the hair-of-the-dog option would only be advisable if you want to pass out to forget what you’ve done the night before. Coffee will not help your stomach either, so the best option is water at room temperature. You may add some fresh lemon or fresh orange juice to give you additional Vitamin C for energy, and for soothing your upset tummy.

Top Up

When you drink excessively, you lose a lot of key minerals and vitamins including potassium, magnesium and B-Vitamins, all of which need to be topped up. Bananas are a great hangover food; they are like nature’s own little hangover cures. Not only are they full of fructose (natural fruit sugar) to help with energy, they contain a nice amount of potassium. Bananas are also natural antacids – which will help your nausea and stomach pain – and they also contain magnesium, which helps to relax pounding blood vessels in your head. Have a banana on toasted wholegrain bread (for the carbohydrates and B-Vitamins) with organic peanut or almond butter (great sources of magnesium and protein), and you get a good dose of all those key minerals and vitamins you lost the night before. Drinking vegetable bouillon soup or coconut water are two other good sources of vitamins and minerals, and easy for a fragile stomach to digest.

Eat

Do eat. Yes, it might be the last thing you want to do, but you will undoubtedly feel a lot better the minute you get your blood sugar levels up after having had some food. There is no one-and-only hangover food cure, but I’ve heard from many of my friends that you can’t beat a good fry-up. It gives you the greasy fat to coat your stomach, and the bread and eggs will give you the carbohydrates and protein for energy and blood sugar support. All I can say there is no perfect food cure for a hangover, so if you’ve found one that works for you, stick to it. My advise, though, would be to opt for a well-balanced meal, including all groups of macronutrients: complex carbohydrate, lean protein and healthy unsaturated fats. A toasted wholegrain bagel with cream cheese and salmon is another good option, and so is porridge with natural yoghurt and strawberries, giving you enough fibre for blood sugar balance, selenium to boost liver function, and Vitamin C for energy and soothing your tummy.

Sleep

But for the best cure of all (and if you have the luxury of not having to get up), go back to bed after your breakfast and sleep it off.

Wishing you a wonderful and nutritious Christmas!

Lisa

But hey you say, again, what’s the point in sticking to it in December when everything is about overindulgence anyways and you’ll put on your usual 5 -8 pounds over the festive period anyways?

It doesn’t need to be that way. Let me tell you. Christmas is only one - two days of  ‘overeating’ so there’s really no need to throw all your good intentions out of the window. It’ll only get harder in January to go back to your healthy you and lose those christmas pounds!

That’s why it’s time to take the following thought on board: ’stuff the turkey and not yourself’ . MAke sure you keep up the good work, incorporate your regular eating patterns, keep eating enough protein and all those immune boosting veggies and fruits out there now which are perfect in soups and stews. Eating well is all about preparation so while you’re doing your christmas shopping always make sure you buy some healthy snacks as well which you can keep in your drawers and handbag so you don’t have to opt for the mince pie lying around in the office. And if you really are too busy to exercise make sure you use every chance to be as active. Take the stairs, go for a walk, get off a tube stop before your home stop, have a dance at the christmas party, carry the presents up to the 4th floor , do some gardening, go ice-skating etc….

And overall, enjoy the festive time with your family and friends. It’s a time to be grateful and share with others.

In festive spirit,

Lisa

And what better way than drinking yourself warm with a fancy holiday latte, hot chocolate, or mug of mulled wine?

But be warned, it’s not just the mince pies that add up to a festive muffin top. Looking at the nutritional value of some of these festive drinks, you might be crossing the finish line of the eat-athon sooner than you expected.

Here are some numbers:

Calories in a mug *

Your normal, everyday skim latte has about 190 calories. Go for some caramel syrup on top and you can add about 50 calories. If you feel more festive, you may choose to drink a small meal worth of calories and have a gingerbread latte (320 calories) or a hot chocolate (370 calories – this includes whipped cream because you’re treating yourself). But if you want to top it off and drink ¼ of your daily recommended calories, go for an eggnog latte which has 470 calories.

That’s not a problem, you say. You’ll just skip your lunch or have a smaller dinner to make up for the calories – you’ll still fit into your LBD at the upcoming Christmas party. But then you find yourself going for a cheeky after work drink in Winter Wonderland, and soon you’re sipping on more calories in a mug, approximately 230 in your first mulled wine.

Here’s a thought to take on board: skipping meals will not help you lose weight, and neither will swapping your lunch for a fancy latte. It will only cause your blood sugar levels to drop rapidly or rise very quickly (due to the high sugar content in those winter warmers), which means you will quickly hit the keyboard wanting another of those yummy sweet warm drinks (or one of the mince pies you saw in the kitchen).

Now let’s have a look at the sugar content of some of those warming festive drinks.

Sugar in a mug

When looking at these numbers, remember what I wrote about previously: Your body can only ever deal with one to two teaspoons of sugar circulating in your system. One teaspoon equals about 4.2g of sugar. (I will leave some of the maths to you when converting the sugar content into teaspoons.)

Your normal skim latte has about 16g of sugar (because of the sugar in milk), but choose one of the festive lattes and you can easily double the sugar content and drink up to 39g of sugar in a medium sized cup. A hot chocolate might even have up to 43g of sugar which is about as much sugar as your daily recommended allowance. And if maths has never been your strengths, this equals about 10 teaspoons of sugar. Now imagine having your morning cup of tea adding 10 (in words, ten!) teaspoons of sugar. I would like to know if you will still be able to enjoy it.

The problem with all this sugar is that you will not only get an energy slump, but your body will also release more insulin to take the sugar out of your cells. And if you don’t end up using all this energy, your body will eventually store it, and your LBD won’t be looking as good anymore.

Why not choose an equally warming herbal tea that’s full of spices, such as yogi or chai tea? After all, you don’t want to be first to cross the finish line of the six week eat-athon. Because you most definitely won’t be wearing your LBD.

Think you might be addicted to sugar? Drop us a line and get in touch so we can help you getting back on track!

Enjoy the festive season,

Lisa

P.S. And if you’re still looking for a christmas present, why not give away a consultation with the Nutrition Coach in January!