Tag Archive for: avocado
Is a low-fat diet causing you to gain weight ?
Good versus Bad – Why we all need it in our diet
We know that diet plays a big role in the health of the body, but an essential nutrient that has been demonized for the past 50 years or so is fat. Low-fat foods have been recommended to be healthy, yet long term chronic health issues are on the rise which are much nastier than the acute health issues from the past.
By eliminating it from the diet and replacing it with sugar and artificial sweeteners has not made us 
healthier; yet society in general relies on sugar and carbohydrates for energy and continue to struggle without essential nutrients.
It is needed to build cell membranes, the vital exterior of each cell, and the sheaths surrounding nerves. It is essential for blood clotting, muscle movement, and inflammation. For long-term health, some fats are better than others. Good fats include monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Bad ones include industrial-made trans fats. Saturated ones fall somewhere in the middle.
Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are known as the “good fats” because they are good for your heart, your cholesterol, and your overall health. These can help to:
- Lower the risk of heart disease and stroke.
- Lower bad LDL cholesterol levels, while increasing good HDL.
- Prevent abnormal heart rhythms.
- Lower triglycerides associated with heart disease and fight inflammation.
- Lower blood pressure.
- Prevent atherosclerosis (hardening and narrowing of the arteries).
Adding more of these healthy fats to your diet may also help to make you feel more satisfied after a meal, reducing hunger and thus promoting weight loss.
- Avocados
- Olives
- Nuts (almonds, peanuts, macadamia, hazelnuts, pecans, cashews)
- Sunflower, sesame, and pumpkin seeds
- Fish (salmon, tuna, mackerel, herring, trout, sardines)
Bad fats
The worst type of dietary fat is the kind known as trans fat. It is a byproduct of a process called hydrogenation that is used to turn healthy oils into solids and to prevent them from becoming rancid. When vegetable oil is heated in the presence of hydrogen and a heavy-metal catalyst such as palladium, hydrogen atoms are added to the carbon chain. This turns oils into solids. It also makes healthy vegetable oils more like not-so-healthy saturated fats. On food label ingredient lists, this manufactured substance is typically listed as “partially hydrogenated oil.” (www.health.harvard.edu)
Examples of bad ones – (Trans fat )
- Cookies, cakes, pizza dough, chips
- Stick margarine, vegetable shortening
- Fried foods – fried chicken, chicken nuggets, breaded fish
- Anything containing hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, even if it claims to be “trans fat-free”
Saturated fat. While not as harmful as trans fat, saturated fat can raise bad LDL cholesterol and too much can negatively impact heart health, so it’s best consumed in moderation. Experts recommend limiting it to 10% of your daily calories.
Saturated fat – primary sources include:
- Red meat (beef, lamb, pork)
- Whole dairy products (milk, cream, cheese)
- Butter, Ice cream
- Lard
- Tropical oils such as coconut and palm oil
If you eat carbohydrates, you body floods your bloodstream with insulin. So eating more carbohydrates means less time in fat burning mode. Which means more fat accumulation in the fat cells. Then this means feeling hungrier and weight gain. Eating more fat and fewer carbohydrates means fat will burn quicker, you are less hungry, and more likely to lose weight.
Your diet determines how much insulin your body will produce over time. From the documentary “Fat Head.”
We think by simply eating healthy carbs, (in small amounts) lean protein, and plenty of fruits and vegetables. Avoid processed foods that contain trans and saturated fats.
Remember not all ones are bad, and there are healthy ones that are essential to a balanced diet. In fact, the American Heart Association recommends healthy Americans, over age 2, eat between 25 and 35 percent of your total daily calories as fats from healthy sources like nuts, fish and oils.
To get more help visit a Systematic Kinesiologist who can help with food intolerances, sensitivities and emotional triggers. https://kinesiology.ie/practitioners/
The Health Show Episode #11 – Sugar Insulin and Diabetes
The Health Show Episode #11 – Sugar Insulin and Diabetes
Sugar Insulin and Diabetes – How understanding blood sugar, insulin, insulin resistance, macro nutrients, supplements, essential fats and reading labels will help you prevent diabetes! There’s a LOT in this month’s Health Show!
For every expert recommending some new health fix, there’s someone else telling you to try the opposite. But something we are all on the same page about is sugar – specifically, added sugar, that is doing us more harm than good. But overall our love of carbohydrates is making us fatter, more tired, and less happy!
While we all know we should consume sugar “in moderation,” it’s easier said than done, especially when it is found in foods as added, and often hidden, ingredients. The WHO (World Health organisation) recently published guidelines on sugar intake for adults and children saying that no more than 10% of a person’s energy intake (calories) should come from free sugars. In Ireland, the National Adult Nutritional Survey in 2011 showed that on average our diets contained 14.6% energy from free sugars.
Watch Siobhan Guthrie’s overview and introduction to this big topic – about our nutritional needs, proteins, essential fats, carbohydrates and what to do to keep our insulin levels low, which will prevent many long term health conditions
[jwplayer player=”4″ mediaid=”6731″]
In today’s Health Show we offer practical tips on helping get the focus away from carbohydrates (such as sugar) and onto proteins and essential fats into the diet, so that you feel satiated, have more energy and long term good health.
Symptoms of blood sugar imbalance:
- Tiredness, ratty, stressed, HUNGRY all the time,
- Prone to infection (especially your teeth and gum disease)
- significant health problems because it’s associated with obesity, heart attacks, polycystic ovarian syndrome, cancer and other serious conditions.
INSULIN – a hormone that is secreted by the pancreas in response to the foods you eat.
Health Tips:
– Add oily fish into your diet
– Use Avocados – great for adding essential fats into your salad
– Hummus – This middle eastern snack is high in protein!
– Beans -Most beans have about 7-10 grams of protein per half cup
– UDOs Oil has the perfect blend of Omega 3/6/9.
Become sugar smart
Understanding food labels is a great tool in becoming sugar smart. Added sugars can come under many different names and are listed to disguise how much sugar is in the “food product”:
• Corn syrup, Golden syrup, Maple syrup.
• Honey, Malt syrup, molasses 
• Glucose (twice as sweet as fructose)
• Fructose
• Sucrose
• Maltose
• Dextrose
• Galactose
• Lactose
• High fructose corn syrup
• Invert sugar
• Hydrolysed starch
And the list goes on! Dextrin, Maltodextrin, Barley malt, Beet sugar, Date sugar, Diatase, Fruit juice, Fruit juice concentrate, Dehydrated fruit juice, Fruit juice crystals, and Agave.
Supplements to help reverse Insulin Resistance and help with sweet cravings
If you are interested in getting some chromium, zinc, magnesium or other supplements to help balance your blood sugar you will find the ones Siobhan recommended by visiting this site. https://www.pharmanord.com/ or from your local Systematic Kinesiologist.
Our next Health Show- episode #12 will take place on the 20th September and with kids heading back to school we will be discussing ”Children and young adolescents achieve their potential academically in today’s world”
If you want to know about the muscle testing Siobhan demonstrated come along to one of our Taster events or find our about our upcoming Balanced Health Courses.
