Food & Beverage Facts and Tips

Keeping a printable weight loss journal while trying to diet is the single most important strategy that guarantees success. Many people simply can’t be bothered to track their food intake. Let’s face it, it can be labor intensive until you get used to it.

If you’ve never tracked your food before, there are easy ways to get started. You may want to purchase an attractive journal from your local bookstore or you may just want to use a spiral notebook. There are also websites that offer printable weight loss journal pages for free.

When you begin recording your food intake, vow to write down every single thing that goes in your mouth. Leaving out small bites or tastes will make your record inaccurate. Include your daily activity in your journal. Having this information handy can be extremely motivating and help move you closer to your fitness goals.

Your journal is an excellent place for you to record your thoughts and feelings as well. Eating tends to have emotional ties and you may be able to spot patterns in time to break them. If nothing else, you’ll be very aware of what you’re eating and why, and be able to identify saboteurs.

You may want to take your weight loss journal with you as you go to work and carry on with your day, so that you can complete it while your memory is fresh. Many people just leave them at home and complete them when they eat dinner. Whichever way works best for you, the main thing is to be factual.

Some people choose to plan out their eating for the day, and record it ahead of time. Others prefer to be more spontaneous with their food and record it later in the day after the meals are eaten. Either way can be very effective. Accuracy is always the key to success.

There are many advantages to using a weight loss journal. It gives you the opportunity to look back at your week’s progress and determine the strengths and weaknesses of your diet. You can check to determine if you ate all the recommended food groups in the proper portion sizes.

You can also check to see if you met your exercise goals. When your weight loss falters, you can see where you went wrong. Finally, if you reach a plateau in your diet, you can look back on a particularly good week and reproduce it.

Do yourself a favor and commit to keeping a weight loss journal. No other diet strategy provides so much in the way of benefits with so little effort. This tip ensures successful attainment of your goals!

Tags: food articles, beverage notes

There’s lots of different detox diets and programs available today, but if you’re getting confused and just want some simple tips on how to detox your body, here’s a list of the top foods that you can use to create many recipes for a detox diet plan. You can eat them as-they-come as part of a raw food detox diet, or why not juice them and create your own detox drinks recipes.

Organic is always better if you find them and afford them, but if not don’t worry about it - non-organic fruits and veg are always a lot better than no fruit and veg at all. All these foods are a great way to build your own natural detox diet program. If you’re just getting and looking for a total body detox, they can provide everything you need to create a healthy and tasty 7 day detox program.

1. The Power of Apples

Apples are a great source of vitamin C but also contain a nutrient called quercetin. Quercetin is an antioxidant that also has the power to help reduce fat and bad cholesterol levels.

Another useful nutrient we get from apples is pectin, which is a soluble dietary fiber. Pectin is known to bind to heavy metals in the colon to help our body excrete them. It also has properties which help our body eliminate other toxins and food additives like tartrazine which has been linked with asthma and hyperactivity in children.

2. Avocados - My Favorite

Apart from anything else I think avos taste great - the fact that they are good for you is even better. Avocados contain a nutrient called gluthathione, which is a powerful antioxidant. It combines with fat soluble toxins, particularly alcohol, and makes them water soluble.

The natural levels of gluthathione in our bodies decrease as we get older, which is one reason why hangovers get worse as we age. Studies of “older people” have shown that those who had higher levels of glutathione were healthier than those with lower levels. The higher level group were also less likely to suffer from arthritis, which many experts believe is a condition aggravated by excess toxicity in our bodies.

3. Artichokes for Liver Detox

Artichokes help increase the production of bile in the liver. Bile is used to transport toxins to the bowel where they are excreted. So greater bile production helps eliminate more toxins. Research shows that eating artichokes can increase the amount of bile produced by up to 127% within as little as 30 minutes of eating it.

Artichokes are also packed with powerful antioxidants, and are a great food for liver detox. In some European studies, tests showed that where free radicals have damaged the liver, this damage is greatly reduced with the use of artichoke extracts.

4. Beetroot - A Vampires Second Worst Enemy.

Two health giving compounds found in beetroot are methionine and betanin. Betanin helps the liver break down fatty acids, and reduces its workload, so it is able to devote more energy to eliminating dangerous toxins from your body. Methionine works on purifying the body’s waste material to help prevent toxin re-uptake.

Beetroot contains methionine and betanin. Methionine helps to purify natural waste bodily waste products. Betanin works to help increase the rate at which the liver breaks down fatty acids. This action helps takes workload off the liver allowing it to fight the dangerous toxins.

5. Cruciferous Vegetables as Anti Carcinogens

The range of cruciferous vegetables are known to have anti-carcinogenic properties by helping our body to destroy carcinogens. These vegetables include Kale, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Spinach, Brussels Sprouts, Radishes, Cabbage, Watercress and several others.

These vegetables contain a nutrient called glucosinolates, which help the liver to produce vital enzymes.

Tags: beverages, food notes

So-called “hard water” is called that because it has an excess of minerals in it that cause the water to leave mineral deposits. These minerals, such as magnesium or calcium don’t allow the water to soap up properly when you wash, stay in your clothing and make them rougher, and may make the water taste and smell badly. Removing these minerals will make the water “soft”.

Probably only about 15% of the homes in U.S. have soft water, according to the United States Geological Survey. These minerals are not harmful to health, and traces of them may even be beneficial. Just as warm air in your home is not harmful, you still want an air cooler.

However, many people do not like the effects of hard water. Besides the annoying features like not being able to suds up your head when you shampoo, hard water also can damage water pipes, faucets and the pots and pans that water is heated in. The minerals in the water can also leave marks and stains on the sink and counter tops that are not very attractive. This ultimately means that most people would prefer to have water in their homes that is treated in order to render it “soft”.

In order to do this, homeowners can install a hard water filter, also known as a water softener that will treat the water as it passes through it. This process takes place by ion exchange, a process in which the sodium chloride molecules are exchanged for the molecules of the minerals that are the cause of hard water. These minerals (mostly magnesium, iron and calcium) are removed when the water is passed through a tank where the ion exchange takes place. Withe these minerals gone, the water is now soft water. The water softener has a resin bed enclosed in a tank containing brine, which is the sodium chloride, or salt. For this reason, the higher level of sodium may not be best for those on a sodium restricted diet.

There are some other filters that work differently, since the water passes through a magnetic field instead of through a brine solution. This magnetic field removes the minerals that can cause damage to your pipe, faucet and cookware. The calcium, which is good for your bones, stays in the water.

There is still some skepticism about the effectiveness of this system: do your own research to find out whether you want to believe the claims.

Hard water filters only eliminate minerals from the water; they do not remove any chemicals or bacteria that may be in your water supply. If you are concerned about the health issues of these contaminants, you will have to install a water filtration system, not a water softening system in your home, or both. Water filtration systems will also soften the water, but not to the extent that a water filter system will.

For more details on air cooler.

Tags: food notes, drinks