Category: Self Improved Lifestyle

http://myslowcarbresults.com/2012/2-quick-easy-high-protein-low-carb-breakfast-options – Looking for some slow carb diet fast & easy breakfast options? Take a look at these…

http://myslowcarbresults.com/2012/what-to-drink-after-an-intense-workout – This is a slow carb diet drink you could have right after a…

http://myslowcarbresults.com/2012/what-to-drink-after-an-intense-workout – This is a slow carb diet drink that you could have immediately after an intense workout.

Author: myslowcarbresultsTags: slow carb diet results the high protein Posted: 16 January 2012Rating: 0.0Votes:…

This after-dinner drink from Skinnygirl Cocktails is the best of both worlds: a sexy cocktail and a dreamy dessert all in one. It’s sweet but not cloyingly sweet, and it won’t leave you too stuffed to… well, you know.

1 ounce vodka
1 ounce Godiva Chocolate Liqueur or Mocha Liqueur
1 ounce brewed espresso, room temperature
Chocolate sauce, for garnish

Combine the vodka, liqueur, and espresso in a shaker filled with ice.

Rim a martini glass by dipping it in chocolate sauce, and pour a teaspoonful of chocolate sauce into the bottom of the glass.

Shake the drink until well chilled and strain it into the glass.

In the Perfect Health Diet, we explain why mixing and matching foods not only makes them taste delicious but reduces their toxicity.

Flavor combinations are highly rewarding. Desserts usually combine carbs with fat, for instance.

Try this experiment. Take a baked potato and put butter, vinegar, and salt on it. It will taste delicious. Now eat the baked potato by itself, butter by itself, vinegar by itself, and salt by itself. You may have trouble finishing the meal.

It looks as though evolution designed the food reward system to get us to eat foods in combination. Does that make sense?

It does, because combining foods increases their nourishment and reduces their toxicity.

For good nourishment, we need a balanced diet—a diet that includes a broad range of nutrients. No single food has a broad enough range of nutrients. It’s easiest to achieve balance if we combine a diversity of plant and animal foods at every meal. The food reward system encourages us to do that.

Toxicity is another problem with unbalanced diets. A famous rule of toxicology—Paracelsus’s rule—is that “the dose makes the poison.” Small amounts of a toxin will be harmless, but large amounts very dangerous. Many foods are like this: a small amount of bok choy is healthful, but two pounds a day of raw bok choy can be deadly. Recently a Chinese woman needed four weeks in the hospital to recover from that amount.

So the food reward system encourages us to mix and match foods, eating only a modest amount of any one food.

Food combining is beneficial for starchy carbohydrates. You may have heard of the “glycemic index,” a measure of how high blood glucose levels rise after eating a food. In general, blood glucose levels below 140 milligrams per deciliter are safe, but glucose becomes increasingly toxic above that level; and higher-glycemic-index foods are more likely to increase blood glucose to a dangerous level.

But the glycemic index is radically reduced when foods are combined:

Fat reduces the glycemic index. Putting butter on French bread lowers its glycemic index from 95 to 65.

Fiber reduces the glycemic index. Adding a polysaccharide fiber to cornstarch reduced its GI from 83 to 58; to rice reduced its GI from 82 to 45.

Acids, such as vinegar, reduce the glycemic index. The amount of vinegar in sushi rice is sufficient to dramatically reduce its glycemic index. Pickled foods, which are sour due to lactic acid released by bacteria, reduce the glycemic index of rice by 27 percent.

Sauces in traditional cuisines typically combine an acid, such as lemon juice or vinegar, and a fat, such as olive oil or coconut milk. These sauces beneficially reduce the glycemic index of a meal, reducing its potential to induce hyperglycemic toxicity. (They are also nourishing in their own right.)

Learn more about the Perfect Health Diet

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What Is Fat Burning WaterPurchase for Best Prescription Weight Loss Pills Canada Get NowThe Fat Loss Factor Package Free Download will help you remove all of the disturbing and troublesome body weights. Dr. Charles D.C as the author of the program will provide you with much information about crash diets along with diet items, such as pill and drops. He’ll explain that the foundation of this plan

Trying to conceive? Try this healing, hormone-balancing fertility soup recipe from Magic Soup.

This soup is unashamedly for women. Our friend Emma Cannon is an amazing acupuncturist and fertility specialist; she gave us this recipe, telling us: “this is the Queen of soups. As one of my old teachers would say, even the making of it is something of a ritual; it’s not only about eating but also connecting to the essence of the bones and heart of ourselves.” Gathering the ingredients, putting them in a big pot and watching the transformation take place is a bit like alchemy. It contains the Chinese herbs dang gui (angelica root) and huang qi (astralgus), both of which are gentle tonics that help to balance the female hormones. They are widely available in Asian stores or online.

Note: It is not recommended to include dang gui root if you are taking the medication Warfarin.

SERVES 4-6

1 small organic chicken (weighing about 2 lbs 3 oz)
4 cloves
1 tsp coriander seeds
5 cardamom pods, bashed
2 star anise pods
a few slices of fresh ginger
3 strips huang qi (astragalus)
2 dang gui roots (angelica)
2 cups black glutinous rice wine, such as Shaoxing noodles or cooked rice, to serve (optional)
tenderleaf salad, to serve

Bring a large pan of water to a boil. Add the chicken and blanch it for 5 minutes, then remove, drain and rinse it. Return it to the pot.

Put the spices, ginger and Chinese herbs in a square of cheesecloth and tie it up to make a spice bag. Add it to the pot along with the rice wine and enough water to cover the chicken. Simmer gently over low heat for up to 4 hours, until tender.

Remove the chicken from the broth, allow to cool slightly, then take the meat off the bones, discarding the bones. Remove the spice bag and pass the stock through a cheesecloth or a fi ne-mesh strainer.

Shred the chicken into large pieces by hand and return it to the broth. You can add your favorite noodles or ladle the soup over cooked rice, or just enjoy the simplicity of chicken soup on its own.

Serve with the tenderleaf salad.

Good health is a state of balance where food choice is key. Learn how to harmonize yin and yang foods with these checklists from The MILF Diet: Let the Power of Whole Foods Transform Your Body, Mind, and Spirit, Deliciously.

Of course, the things we put into our mouths are made of yin and yang forces too, and they impart their distinct energies to us. Some natural foods create more contraction, heat, and pressure (more yang), while others have a relaxing, expanding, and cooling (more yin) effect on the body. Still others hang out in the middle. Natural foods help us maintain our balance.

But when we eat too many foods that contain extreme yin or extreme yang force, they make us lose our balance.

Let’s take a look. Here are foods and substances that carry strong, or extreme, yang force:

EXTREME YANG FOODS
• Meat (beef, pork, lamb, venison, etc.)
• Poultry
• Eggs
• Salty cheeses
• Too much or bad-quality salt (and sodium in processed foods)
• Hard, dry baked flour products
• Caffeine (has strong yin, too)
• Some food additives and preservatives

Yang foods tend to contain more sodium and less potassium. They are saltier and denser, and have a contracting or drying effect on the body. Of course, you can eat some of these foods some of the time, but daily use and/or overuse of these substances causes the systems of your body to tip into excess tightness and contraction. Eating too much of them can make your overall energy too tight, intense, or overheated and may even make things clot, harden, or close. Consumed in excess, over long periods of time, these foods can help fuel conditions like high blood pressure, muscle stiffness, constipation, kidney stones or gallstones, atherosclerosis (or anything ending in sclerosis, which means “hardening”), heart disease, and cancers that are hard and found in the lower parts of, or deep within, the body, such as ovarian, prostate, pancreatic, and bone.

Clearly, we don’t want that.

But extreme yang force doesn’t work just on physical systems; it has some emotional and behavioral side effects, too:

• Chronic aggression
• Rigidity in thinking and behavior
• Being controlling and overly competitive
• Sexual obsession or compulsivity
• Materialism
• Inability to relax
• Self-absorption
• Closed-mindedness
• Lack of sensitivity to one’s inner world, one’s emotions, or other people
• The desire to dominate nature and others

Do you know anyone who fits this checklist? And how does he or she eat? Think about it. On the other end of the spectrum are the foods and substances that carry strong, or extreme, yin force:

EXTREME YIN FOODS
• White sugar and other refined carbohydrates
• Milk, cream, butter, ice cream, and soft cheeses
• Tropical fruits and fruit juices (unless you live in the tropics)
• Tropical spices (unless you live in the tropics)
• Nightshade vegetables (potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, and bell peppers)
• Chocolate
• Alcohol
• Marijuana and other recreational drugs
• Caffeine (has strong yang impact, too)
• Artificial sweeteners
• Most prescription drugs
• Birth control pills
• Some food additives and preservatives

Yin foods often contain more potassium than sodium. Tropical foods are considered more yin because they have a more expansive and cooling effect on the body. Many extreme yin foods are highly processed and have been stripped of their minerals, and as you may have noticed, lots of yin things we ingest on a regular basis aren’t actually foods at all. For the most part, yin substances tend to release energy and send it to the periphery.

The Biggest Loser is back January 4, 2016 for its 17th season, but with a new host, a new gym and even a brand new logo, this season will be anything but business as usual. America’s favorite trainers Dolvett Quince and Jen Widerstrom return this season to train eight teams of two contestants, all competing to […]

When author Daniel Smith called home in an anxiety-induced panic, his therapist mother instructed him to sit quietly and breathe deeply. It worked. For the short term, at least. From Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety.

My mother is the Billy Graham of therapeutic breathing. Many years ago, she had little rectangular signs made with the word “breathe” printed on them in flowery epigraphical type, to display in her office. She owns dozens of sheets of neon-orange breathe stickers that she distributes to anyone in need. Growing up, one was posted on our refrigerator and another on the wall just beneath the kitchen telephone, at eye level. They were meant to remind my mother that whenever she felt unsteady, whenever the old anxiety feeling came back, she should sit down, close her eyes, and—

And what? What was this process by which the beast was to be neutralized? What alternate states of consciousness or bodily contortions did it require? I had never before asked, and when my mother had tried to tell me I hadn’t listened. I listened now, and I was incredulous, for the change in breathing my mother preached was, when you got down to it, minuscule.

“Go,” she said. “Find a quiet place to sit.”

“But there isn’t a place to sit.”

“Of course there is. I’ve been there. It’s a college campus.

There are tons of places to sit.”

“No, there aren’t. The place is overrun. There are people everywhere. It’s an infestation!”

“The library,” she said. “Go to the library.”

“But there are loads of people in the library! That’s where they keep the computers.”

“Then try another floor. Go to the basement.”

I did as she said. In the periodicals room I found a wool-knit lounge chair with a heavy wooden frame and heaved it in front of a window overlooking a copse of trees at the base of a steep hill.

“The secret is to breathe much lower than you’re breathing,” my mother said. “When you’re anxious you breathe too high in the chest. You want to breathe lower, in your belly. You want to be able to feel your belly rise and fall. When you sit, put your hand on your belly and feel it rise and fall as you breathe. Breathe slowly. First breathe in through your nose. Count to four as you breathe. Then breathe out as you count to six. Close your eyes. Breathe. Keep your hand on your belly. In through your nose, four, out through your mouth, six. In through your nose, four, out through your mouth, six. In through your nose, four, out through your mouth, six…”

I did as she said. I laid my right hand on my stomach, closed my eyes, and breathed. I felt my belly rise and fall. In through the nose, four, out through the mouth, six. In through the nose, four, out through the mouth, six… At first, nothing happened. It was difficult even to sit still, let alone to focus on the numbers. I almost stood and bolted for the stairs. Then, gradually, I felt it working. Somewhere within me things shifted. My blood chemistry recalibrated. Ions flipped their charge. Molecules realigned. The organism settled. Behind my eyelids the dark was now a dampening dark rather than the dark of terrifying space. I felt, as I opened my eyes to the bending trees, as I imagined I was meant to feel. I felt lucid.

My mother is far from the only therapist to tout the powers of the breath. Anxious people breathe too quickly, and from the upper parts of the lungs, increasing the heart rate and throwing off pH balance and resulting in all sorts of unpleasant physiological changes. Learning to breathe slowly and more deeply is sound advice. “Once a client of mine can control his breathing patterns in a variety of situations, I believe he is 50 percent along on the road to success,” writes one anxiety specialist. “For some people, identifying and mastering breathing patterns will completely end their symptoms and resolve their problems.”

Unfortunately, this has not been the case for me. Breathing techniques have helped, but they haven’t been able to resolve the problem—probably because my anxiety is so cerebral. For true change, I require higher-order instruction. Whatever help breathing did bring, meanwhile, it didn’t bring for years, until I was ready to put in the time needed to change my habits.