Posts Tagged ‘fat’

The Effect of Wheat on Fat Around the Stomach

April 29th, 2010

The old school method of preparing for some big athletic endeavor, such as a marathon or an important sports game, was to do what is called a carbo-load. That usually meant a huge, steaming plate of spaghetti the night before, to make sure that a ton of carbohydrates were available to the body as fuel for when the going got tough. Of course, it had the added benefit of tasting really good, and being incredibly easy to make. But while good carbs are a very important type of fuel for the body, is all of that glutinous wheat really the best delivery system for it?

If you are starting a raw food diet, you will have cut out a lot of the wheat products that you might have grown up with – pastas, breads and the like. For many people, these are some of the most difficult things to change within a diet. They taste good, and they do a remarkable job of filling your stomach. But that is not all they do to your stomach area.

The sugars, starches and carbs found in wheat products can quickly convert to fat if not used immediately, and more often than not, that fat will accumulate around your midsection.

If you are wondering how to eat a raw diet – a great way to avoid those fatty wheat products – but still get your noodle cravings taken care of, never fear. There is raw food help available to get you the carbs you crave, and the pasta you love, without resorting to masses of cooked wheat noodles.

The starches that wheat contains as a carbohydrate can be found in many rawly consumable foods, such as high-starch vegetables like squashes. You can also get your wheat-like carbs from other veggies like carrots and cauliflower, or from legumes like peanuts. Unlike wheat, these carbs can be eaten raw, and will contribute less to your spare tire, and more to your body’s fuel requirements.

But if is the pasta part of wheat that you really crave, fear not. There is even a healthy, raw alternative to your favorite spaghetti.

Of course, the sauce is simple enough, using fresh tomatoes, basil, and a few spices to flavor. Blend these in your food processor to the consistency you prefer, and use immediately – no cooking time required. For the noodles, a great alternative to wheat pasta is raw zucchini noodles. Again, you won’t have to cook these noodles – you simply take a good sized zucchini, and with your usual vegetable peeler, begin stripping off noodle-sized strips. You can simply eat the pasta as is, or you can add a touch of cold-pressed olive oil over the top for an even more authentic texture.

The important thing to remember is that you do not have to resort to sticky, sugary and fattening wheat starches in order to get the carbohydrates that your body requires. Eating a raw diet will offer you plenty of new and interesting foods with a high carb count, without adding fat to your midsection.

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Posted in Food For Thought, Weight Loss

Tags: carbo loading carbohydrates carbs fat Pasta raw food raw food diet spaghetti weight gain Weight Loss Wheat Zucchini

Thanksgiving Survival Guide – 4 Dietary Tips to Help You Stay Healthy Over the Holidays

November 25th, 2009

turkey_dinner With American Thanksgiving just a day away I thought I should do my part in helping you survive this often “toxic” time of year.

By toxic, I simply mean the overeating of heavy foods like turkey, stuffing, and pie that don’t necessarily energize your body.

You know what I mean, right?

Have you ever eaten so much that you’ve felt like falling asleep at the table?

Well, as you can imagine, this time of year is famously known for “dinner time narcolepsy”. So with that in mind, I wanted to take the next few days to give you some helpful dietary tips to prevent overeating and/or feeling the paralyzing effects of doing so.

Thanksgiving Survival Tip #1 – Food Combining is Key!

Food combining is the principle of combining certain foods together, while avoiding the mixing of other foods. The rationale is that different foods require different digestive environments (ie. acid vs. alkaline) and, thus, if such foods are combined, their respective digestive juices neutralize each other. As a result, these foods are not properly digested.

If foods are not digested properly, they cause disruption further down the digestive tract, impair proper elimination, and can seep into the bloodstream whereby they can be detected as “allergens”. Also, undigested foods that sit around in your stomach for hours are more readily stored as fat and make you gassy, bloated, and tired. Pretty tough to lose weight if this is happening.

Therefore, food combining is just one of your digestive weapons to ensure that what you eat is broken down and assimilated properly.

FOOD COMBINING 101

The basic recommendations are the following:

1. Avoid mixing starchy carbs with complex proteins

Here are some examples: pasta with meat sauce, turkey and mashed potatoes, chicken and rice.

These are combinations that you want to avoid. One of the reasons that Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners are so filling (and tiring) is because we tend to poorly combine our foods.

Instead, combine starchy carbs OR proteins with healthy fats (olive oil, etc..) and green leafy or cruciferous veggies. Good examples of this include: chic peas with kale, salmon with swiss chard and spinach, and turkey and veggies (other than potatoes).

2. Eat fruit alone, and on an empty stomach

Raw fruit will digest itself (because of its enzymes) in your stomach in 15-20 minutes. And if eaten right after a meal (as dessert for instance), then its sugars will ferment on top of the existing meal that is still being processed in your stomach. As a result, you will feel bloated, gassy, and perhaps experience some discomfort in your abdomen.

Therefore, eat fruit on its own (or with sprouted nuts and seeds to moderate sugar load) to enable optimal digestion.

The important thing to remember is that you need to listen to your body. If you are gassy, bloated, tired, or experience pain in your stomach, these are signs that what you are eating is not being digested properly.

And poor digestion is the first step to numerous health-related problems.

Thanksgiving Survival Tip #2 – Food Sequencing

Food combining is powerful. But let’s say that you are given a plate full of different kinds of foods. Let’s take the typical holiday feast as an example.

On your plate you’ve got turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and maybe some greens. Wow, I’m getting tired just thinking of it!

What do you do? Is there a way to eat your meal to help your body better digest it?

Yes! It’s all about food sequencing.

In a nutshell, here’s how food sequencing works:

1 Eat SIMPLE FOODS and ENZYME-RICH FOODS first

These are generally raw foods such as salad or raw veggies. Their enzymes will assist in the digestion of the foods you eat next. Bread would fit in here as well.

2 Eat COMPLEX CARBOHYDRATES + FIBER-RICH FOODS next

These include your starchy root vegetables (sweet potato, yams, etc…). We eat these before heavier protein because they are digested more rapidly and thus can pass through the digestive
tract unimpeded.

3 Eat PROTEIN + FAT last

These take the longest to digest and thus should be eaten after the aforementioned foods. This is more applicable to those who eat animal proteins. If you are a vegan than your protein will
be coming from easy to assimilate plant sources such as legumes. Furthermore, plant-based proteins don’t carry saturated fats or cholesterol (only healthy fats) which further assists their digestion.

So, now let’s turn back to our example of turkey dinner. What would be the best way to “sequence” your meal?

Ideally, this is what it should be sequenced:

Greens –> Cranberry Sauce –> Mashed Potatoes –> Stuffing –> Turkey

Now I know that most of us like to enjoy different flavours on our palate all at once, but just give this a shot the next time you don’t a have a meal that is properly “food combined”. The difference will be noticeable!

Thanksgiving Survival Tip #3 – Keep the Sugar Monster Under Control

Did you know that many allergies are caused by food that is not properly digested?

Undigested food is often due to unbalanced mineral relationships, which prevent digestive enzymes from functioning properly. When these undigested food particles enter the bloodstream they can travel to different parts of the body and wreak havoc. If they travel to the head, the result can be headaches, fatigue, dizziness; in other parts of the body they can manifest as eczema, joint inflammation, asthma, and much more.

Ok, so how does this tie in with holiday eating?

The answer – SUGAR!

Sugar depletes enzymes by upsetting the body’s fine mineral balance. Because minerals are a key component to enzymes, if they are affected, so too will your ability to digest your food.

And digesting your food properly has really been the theme of this 4-part series, hasn’t it?

So the message is that when you eat sugar with other foods, you impair your body’s ability to digest them. For instance, having a glass of orange juice (high in sugar) with your morning breakfast makes your meal susceptible to not being digested properly. Whatever is in that meal is then more at risk of becoming a food allergen, overtime.

If you’re going to have sugar, do your best to ensure that it’s a healthy source such as fruit and that it is not eaten in conjunction with other foods. Refrain from having fruit or high-sugar desserts right after your meal. Give your body at least 1-2 hours to digest and then you can consider a little holiday indulgence.

Thanksgiving Survival Tip #4 – Use digestive enzymes!

Taking digestive enzymes with your meals can be one of the most impactful things you can do your digestion and your health.

Remember that when you cook your foods, you destroy their enzymes. As such, your body spends a huge amount of energy to produce and use its own limited supply of enzymes to digest your food. Many times, these foods are not even properly digested – leading to the passage of undigested food particles into the bloodstream! You remember the allergy talk the other day, right?

Therefore, to assist your digestion taking 1-2 digestive before and/or during your meal can be a huge bonus. Try it and you’ll see what I mean.

When selecting a digestive enzyme look for one that contains a wide spectrum of enzymes such as proteases, lipases, and various other “-ases” that will work on the various macronutrients within your foods.

Enzymes are the key to life. Enzyme therapy has even been used to help treat terminal diseases! Enzymes are needed for every single reaction in your body and when you run out of enzymes,
you run out of life.

So, when that plate of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and whatever is placed in front of you, give your body a helping hand by supplying it with the digestive enzymes that will help it breakdown these “dead” foods.

What Happens Next Week?

So there you have my 4 dietary tips to surviving Thanksgiving and staying healthy over the holidays. However, by the time next week rolls around you may be feeling a bit sluggish and in need of a kickstart to get your body back into the healthy eating groove.

If that’s the case, then I highly recommend grabbing a copy of our Total Wellness Cleanse program – it will do your body a world of good.

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Posted in General Nutrition

Tags: allergies american asthma bloodstream carbohydrates cranberry sauce dietary tips digestion digestive enzymes dinner eczema elimination energy fat fats food combining foods fruit fruits guide headaches inflammation lethargic lose weight meal minerals overeating potatoes protein sequencing stomach stuffing sugar survival thanksgiving tired turkey veggies

Digestive Enzymes for Better Digestion

October 15th, 2009

Digestion is perhaps the most important function our body performs. Obviously, that’s up for debate but the truth of the matter is that faulty digestion is where most health problems begin.

Think of allergies, auto-immune diseases, candidiasis, constipation, eczema, asthma, and many more.

All of these problems (and tons of others) can be caused and/or attributed to bad digestion.

Bring in the Enzymes…

Our body produces 2 different kinds of enzymes: digestive and metabolic.

Metabolic enzymes are used in every single reaction in the body outside of digestion. These are also critical for helping to breakdown immune complexes and dead cells, and helping to rebuild new tissue.

Digestive enzymes are produced within the digestive tract and are used exclusively to assist in the breakdown of food.

The problem with digestive enzymes is that we only have a limited number of them.

That’s where the importance of eating more raw foods come into play. Raw foods are packed with food enzymes (the 3rd category of enzymes). These enzymes are inherent in every single living food and are there to help the digestion of that given food.

If you eat a raw apple, it’s inherent food enzymes will pretty much take care of the digestive process. However, cook that apple above 118 degrees fahrenheit and you can kiss those food enzymes goodbye.

When we eat food that no longer contains “food enzymes” our body is forced to expend more of its limited supply of digestive enzymes to break down the food.

Over time, this can become a problem as our digestive system weakens and digestion becomes compromised.

Digestive Support Nutrients

So we know that we need to support our digestive system by eating a greater proportion of living foods since they are enzyme-rich.

But what do you do if you occasionally eat cooked foods?

One thing I would highly recommend is to supplement with some digestive aids like digestive enzymes and hydrochloric acid.

In general, you want to choose a digestive enzyme that covers a full spectrum of enzymes. You’ll see the suffix -ase on nearly all enzymes. For instance, maltase digests the sugar maltose. Lactase breaks down lactose. And so on.

However, there are other enzymes that do not end with -ase such as chymotrypsin, pepsin, trypsin, and pancreatin.

I personally use a digestive enzyme at any meal in which the foods are cooked. Since I understand the importance of proper digestion, as well as the fact that I have an underactive stomach (as do most people), I definitely feel that my digestion is much improved with the use of supplemental digestive enzymes.

Hydrochloric acid (HCl) is another digestive aid I use anytime I eat cooked foods, and in many cases raw foods as well.

HCl is naturally produced and secreted by the parietal cells in the lining of our stomach in response to the ingestion of fat or protein. However, when we eat more frequently than required by the body or over-consume fats or proteins, acid production begins to decrease.

And decreased HCl production can lead to faulty digestion, with symptoms like gas, belching, bloating, discomfort after meals, fatigue after meals, and excessive fullness.

As I just mentioned, most people have an underactive stomach. This means that their stomach does not produce sufficient HCl to properly digest their foods.

For this reason, I highly recommend taking supplementary HCl with your meals.

The only contraindication to using digestive enzymes and HCl is if you have an ulcer or other type of gastric inflammation as too much extra stomach acid may further irritate the situation.

HCl is primarily available as betaine hydrochloride. You can take one or more capsules before, during, and after your meals to assist your stomach in producing enough acid.

The combination of digestive enzyme and HCl supplementation will not only help you digest your foods better but they will also improve your energy levels, help slow the aging process, and prevent many chronic degenerative diseases from developing.

It’s very powerful stuff!

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