Exercise is Key

It is possible to eat great amounts of food, feel full and still lose weight. You just need to pick the right kinds of food to eat. A study at Pennsylvania University compared the weight loss of two types of dieters.

One group followed a diet that consisted mainly of food with high levels of water and fibre (essentially fruit and veg) while the other group went on a calorie-controlled diet. The group eating a high fibre diet lost more weight.

Filling up on vegetables and fruit is one of the best kept dieting secrets. As they are fat free you can easily eat as many as you like without feeling guilty. The three top vegetables in terms of health and nutritional benefits are kale, swiss chard and greens. These contain more vitamins and nutrients than any other vegetables.

The optimum diet consists of fruit and vegetables, nuts and seeds and lean protein. The fruit and veg will allow you to lose weight but you need lean protein to step up the metabolism.

Good examples of lean protein are: fish (especially salmon and fresh sardines), chicken and turkey, lean red meat and eggs.

The ideal amount of protein you should have for each meal is 30grammes. Your body needs to be able to digest the protein you put in, too much protein becomes toxic in the body, so if you add greens and salads to the protein the enzymes in the greens help to digest the proteins.

Some foods cause your body to store fat, i.e. foods that are high in sugar. Others force your metabolism to burn more stored fat for energy, like lean protein.

But before starting any new diet change, you need to clean out or detox your body, eliminate the build up of toxins.

A simple morning drink to help rid yourself of these toxins and to help with digestion is to squeeze 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon, (or lemon concentrate if you don’t have it), into a glass of water and mix with a pinch of cayenne pepper. Continue to drink 8 glasses of water throughout the day.