Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Get back on track after Easter

Last week we tweeted some tips on how to get back on track if your healthy living plan has fallen by the wayside (if you're not on twitter, get into it; it's loads of fun).

So if you, like many people, ate your weight in Easter eggs this weekend, you might be interested in some of our tips...

1. Get your peeps into "healthy mode". Try to find one or two others (or more) & make a health pact to eat well & exercise more.
2. Plan & prepare: Go food shopping. Make an exercise plan for the week. Simple, but it works!
3. Engineer your social life: Dinner? Go Japanese. Weekend catch up? Do a run/walk & breakfast instead of a drink. So easy & just as fun.
4. Cut out the nasties - white sugar & white flour, anything fried or too high in saturated fat. Cut down on meat. Go low fat dairy. Eat more fish and vegetarian meals.
5. Zero tolerance: If you're not so good at stopping after one treat, adopt a zero tolerance policy for your vices.
6. Move your ass. Walk, run, swim, bike, yoga, wotevz - just move it! Exercise always inspires you to eat well too so there's a bonus!
7. Eat what you want, but less of it. When zero tolerance doesn't work, try to restrict yourself to only one 500kj treat each day. For example, a snack pack of chips or 20gms of chocolate is about 500kjs.
8. Drink enough water. You might think you're hungry, but if you're not drinking enough water, you're prob thirsty. Aim for 1.5-2 litres per day.
9. Just because there's a cute m&m dispenser at work doesn't mean you need to eat any!
10. Eat an apple 30 mins before lunch. Studies have shown that people consume 15% less kilojoules after an apple. It feels virtuous too!

Hopefully this helps to get you back into "healthy mode". (At least until Anzac Day long weekend anyway!)

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Weight loss and detoxing/cleansing

I can't tell you how many people ask if they will lose weight while they are cleansing. Tons of them... The answer is yes, but it's not quite as simple as that.

You definitely do lose weight, but not all the weight you lose is fat and some of it will come back if you’re not careful after the cleanse finishes.

A lot of the weight you will lose is excess fluid. Excess fluid (fluid retention or edema) has many causes including; too much salt or not enough protein in the diet, food and environmental allergies, poor circulation, and hormonal imbalances (women are particularly prone to fluid retention prior to and during their periods). Fluid retention masquerades as fat (and looks like fat) and can add up to 2kgs to even the smallest frame.

Juice cleansing can help to flush this excess fluid due the natural diuretic properties of many of the ingredients used and the cleanse’s high content of water (which actually helps get rid of excess water, contrary to what you might think).

In addition to this, because the cleanse is relatively low in kilojoules (approx 4400 kilojoules per day for a Level 1 cleanse), you will most likely lose some fat also.

It’s pretty simple, if you want the weight to stay off following the cleanse, you need to eat less salt (the main offender for fluid retention) and follow a healthy, wholefoods diet (see our blog post on Simple Healthy Eating Principles). If you can stay off the booze, takeout and sugar for a few weeks after your cleanse, you’ll do your body (and weight), the world of good.