Sunday, February 14, 2010

How To Lose Weight In A Week

‘How to lose weight quickly’ diets are all over the media, on television, websites, newsstands, radio, magazines and books.

Most overweight people want to know how to lose weight in a week.  They are, quite rightly, desperate to lose excess weight and will grasp at anything that promises how to lose weight fast.  But many of these “lose weight fast” diets are based on false promises and ill-founded opinions, and can actually be harmful and even counter-productive, leading to greater weight gain!

Here are just some of the myths and misinformation promoted by “quick weight loss” gurus:

Myth:  cut calories to lose weight.
Reality:  cutting calories makes the body think it must preserve fat, and so you put on weight instead of achieving weight reduction.

Myth:  following set menus and eating plans can help lose weight.
Reality:  most diet books and weight loss plans promote set menus of what to eat when.  This never works because food preferences and lifestyles vary so much.  Indeed, by following any kind of set food menus, day in day out, you are more likely to gain weight because you will either go hungry or get too bored with the monotony.  Then when you give up the set menus you will quickly re-gain your weight (and more) as you go back to your old eating habits.

Myth:  eating whole grain and fiber-rich foods is healthy and will help you lose weight.
Reality:  whole grains are no healthier than milled grains, and do nothing to promote good health or help you lose weight.  Furthermore, there is plenty of scientific evidence showing that a high-fiber diet is bad for health.  Fiber robs the body of vitamins and minerals.  This leads to poor nutrition, which in turn prevents safe and healthy weight loss.  We do not need much fiber in our daily diets and getting enough is very easy.  Exhortations to eat more fiber are counter-productive.

Myth:  fruit juice is non-fattening and healthy, as part of a well-balanced diet.
Reality:  drinking fruit juice is more fattening and unhealthier than just about any other kind of food.  Fruit juice gives the body a blast of fructose sugar without being bound up with fiber – this goes straight to body fat giving you quick weight gain, and is much worse for health than even table sugar!

Myth:  you should eat less and exercise to lose weight.
Reality:  The less you eat the more fat you put on because any kind of food restriction makes the body store more fat.  When you exercise more you make yourself feel more hungry and exhausted, and you end up stuffing yourself with junk food which just makes you fatter.  The secret is to exercise the smart way so that you don’t feel hungry and exhausted.

Myth:  drink less water so as to reduce water retention and feel less bloated.
Reality:  you must drink plenty of water to lose water retention (not less!).  When you drink plenty of water the body will “think” it no longer needs to retain water in body tissue, and you quickly lose excess water.

Myth:  a good way to lose weight is to increase your metabolic rate so as to burn fat fast.
Reality:  your heart should sink when you come across such ridiculous notions.  The metabolic rate is nothing more than a set of many different chemical reactions inside the body.  Some of these chemical reactions work faster than others at different times of the day or night depending on a multitude of factors.  In fact, fatter people tend to have higher metabolic rates (i.e. burn fat/energy faster) because of their higher body mass.  To use (or attempt to control) the metabolic rate as a way of losing weight is like using a table-tennis ball to play tennis (impossible!).

How to lose weight in a week is a question many people ask.  And yes, you can lose weight in a week, safely, quickly and easily if you know how.  But 99% percent of dietary advice about how to lose weight quickly is completely wrong.  Worse still, if you don’t do it right, any attempts to lose weight quickly will re-bound and you will end up putting on more weight than before.

You definitely don’t want to lose weight in a week and then put it all back the week after.  Yo-yo dieting ruins your health and prevents weight loss.  You want to lose weight quickly, but permanently.  All human beings are the same biologically.  Therefore there can only be one best way for a human being to lose weight quickly, safely, and permanently. 

In recent years medical research into weight loss has made exciting discoveries and now there is a kind of consensus on the best way for any human being to lose weight safely and quickly.  A key point that has come out of this research is that you gain weight when your hormones are out of balance (not functioning properly) and you lose excess weight when your hormones are in balance.

What makes your hormones go out of balance? Several factors, but by far the biggest factor is the diet. And dairy milk products are increasingly being seen as the biggest dietary cause of hormonal disharmony. It's not the fat in milk that causes weight gain, its the havoc caused by dairy milk to your hormones that causes weight gain.

Keep well,
Russell Eaton
How to lose weight in a week

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Best Way To Make Milk as Substitute for Dairy Milk

Coconut Milk Powder can be purchased in supermarkets for making milk at home. However, this is not recommended because it usually contains whey or some other dairy milk product. Whey and cow milk products contain IGF-1 hormones which are known to bad for health and will not be suitable for anybody wanting to avoid dairy milk.


For general every day milk consumption Coconut Milk Powder is best avoided, except for very occasional use. It is manufactured through a spray drying process of raw unsweetened coconut cream. This is very different from the more widely available and coarser desiccated coconut which is made by machines that merely grate the white coconut meat.

The process of spray drying has the effect of mixing oxygen (from the air) into the powder, under very hot drying conditions. As a result, Coconut Milk Powder is “oxidized” and will go rancid quite quickly if not refrigerated and consumed within one or two days. This process also has the effect of increasing nitrate levels in powdered milk, whether dairy or coconut. High levels of nitrates can increase the risk of cancer.

Many people would like to have a good alternative to dairy milk. At the very least, most people would like to have more of a choice when it comes to milk. Dairy milk is known to be fattening and for some people lactose intolerance is a real issue. You can, of course, buy soy milk but this also has its drawbacks.

Soy milk is generally more expensive than dairy milk and may not be so widely available. Furthermore, soy milk can also be quite fattening if you opt for the sweetened variety. If you opt for the unsweetened variety, most people dislike the taste. The biggest problem with soy milk is that it contains genistein, a harmful hormone that is causing increasing concern among scientists.

Genistein can increase the risk of cancer in a person who regularly consumes soy milk. Genistein does this by making body cells divide and multiply. The U.S National Cancer Institute says that genistein “disrupts signal transduction between cells and induces cell differentiation (i.e. cell multiplication)”.

Unfortunately the National Cancer Institute makes no reference to soy milk in it’s fact sheets. But there are several studies showing that soy milk consumption is increasingly being linked with cancer. To see some of this research simply do an internet search for “soy milk cancer” (without the quotation marks).

So what kind of milk is good to consume? Simply switch to coconut milk. The latest scientific research shows that coconuts are in fact not fattening! The molecular structure of coconut fat is different – it gets stored as energy instead of as body fat. This gives you energy and helps you lose weight and stay slim.

Coconut milk is very nutritious and absolutely delicious. Do not confuse canned “coconut milk” as sold in supermarkets with “home-made coconut milk”. The former is a condiment, the latter is a genuine dairy milk substitute. You would use canned coconut milk as part of a recipe to make home-made coconut milk. It can be made quickly and easily in just a minute or so, and then be stored in the fridge just like regular milk.

Home-made coconut milk is non-fattening, nutritious, and absolutely delicious. Best of all it is far, far superior in quality compared to any kind of commercial milk, whether dairy or non-dairy. Up until now, making coconut milk at home has been a complicated and time-consuming affair. But now at last you can make coconut milk at home quickly and easily, saving time and money.

To find out how to make coconut milk quickly and easily, saving time and money, download the free ebook The Incredible Coconut Book. This book shows exactly how to make delicious and nutritious milk that is dairy-free and soy-free. Download it now – go to The Incredible Coconut Book.

Keep well,
Russell Eaton