Can people eat carbs and still lose weight? Fitness expert Denise Austin thinks they can.
Austin has dedicated her career to helping women get in shape. In addition to hosting two long-running TV shows, she has published over 40 books and exercise tapes on the subject of getting fit.
Now, she has come out with her first diet book. Denise Austin’s 28-Day Diet Plan promises that everyone who follows the regimen to a fare-thee-well will lose one dress size in a month, and not to mention saving money with the various Denise Austin Online diet coupons.
The Diet for Carb-Lovers
The beauty of the diet is its emphasis on carbohydrates. Austin feels not only that low-carb diets can wreak havoc on the human body, but also that they can actually encourage a person to gain weight. She firmly believes that carbohydrates, when eaten in the right amounts and correct proportions, serve as a far more effective foundation for any weight-loss regime.
Austin bases her diet plan on the intelligent combination of foods based on each one's glycemic load. This measurement is calculated by comparing a carbohydrate’s weight in grams to the speed with which the body converts it into sugar. Austin’s 1,200-calorie-a-day diet aims to limit the glycemic load of that day’s dietary intake to no more than 80.
Breakdown of Denise Austin’s Diet
Although the exact amounts do vary, each meal is made up of about 45 grams of carbohydrate, three or four ounces of protein, and one or two servings of fat. All portions must be measured, either visually or with a measuring device.
The diet itself is broken into two parts. During the first phase of 28 days, the diet must be followed exactly. After that, however, the dieter can feel free to either make substitutions in recipe ingredients or combine meals or snacks from different days. The book includes nearly 100 pages of recipes, and this makes the diet easy to follow.
Sample Menu
An actual example from the book gives a good idea of what one day’s meals will look like. Breakfast, for example, will consist of ½ cup of Kashi topped with 8 ounces of fat-free milk and half of a small banana. This will be followed by a kiwi for a mid-morning snack.
At lunch, the dieter can feast on a ham sandwich consisting of 3 ounces of lean ham, 1 ounce of Swiss cheese, 2 slices of tomato and 2 teaspoons of mustard on 2 slices of multigrain bread. One cup of papaya will serve as dessert, and a slice of banana bread topped with 2 teaspoons of butter will make a filling mid-afternoon snack.
A typical dinner will consist of 1 vegetable frittata, 1/8 avocado, ½ cup raw mushrooms and 2 teaspoons butter with a slice of Italian bread. A pear baked in rum sauce wraps up the meal.
In addition to its menu diversity, the diet’s carbohydrate levels help to satisfy hunger. “No one needs to sacrifice so much to lose weight,” says Austin.
Filed under Diets by on Mar 26th, 2012. 
While some people believe that in order to be healthy one must follow the various nutrition guidelines that scientists have created thanks to recent technological progress, there are others with a different school of thought. The truth is that no matter how we twist it, if cavemen didn’t have to face the slew of killer animals against which they were pitted every day, their life expectancy would have probably been off the charts. Indeed, it has been found that the further we go back in history, the healthier people were notwithstanding external factors. Following this logic, there are some out there who concluded that eating like a caveman can prove beneficial.
What does eating like a caveman really imply? Well, you certainly won’t be required to go out into the wilds hunting lions and then eating their raw meat after hoisting their heads as trophies, if that’s what you were expecting (you can do that on your own free time). What it actually implies is simply maintaining a balanced diet without having anything complicated in it. Eating like a caveman will mean that you will be basically eating more meat, fat, and high-in-protein foods in general while still taking in a healthy dose of vegetables. Scientists have found that the early caveman diets to which some people have already reverted can indeed bring about many benefits, especially when it comes to building a healthy immune system and maintaining a strong composition.
The best part about eating like a caveman is that there is an actual service offered by Diet to Go that delivers the healthy caveman diet food right to your door. You can even take advantage of a Diet to Go coupon in order to redeem a discount, making your meal very cheap, especially considering the quality of the food that you are paying for.
Filed under Diets by on Dec 16th, 2011.
Read any book on nutrition and you'll come across warning signs about chemical pollution of our food supply, increased food allergies, irritable bowel syndromes and diabetes. People are clearly loading up on too many simple carbohydrates, sugars and fatty foods. It's time we started to take notice of what we are eating to ensure that we remain fit and healthy.
A good way of thinking about how our body works is to compare it with an automobile. To run well an automobile needs the right kind of fuel and oils. Clearly if you don't provide your car with the right fuel it will not run. The same goes for our internal "motor" - it needs the right kind of fuel (in the form of carbohydrates, fats, proteins, fiber, vitamins and minerals) to work properly.
In many ways a "modern caveman diet" is what we need. It would certainly help us get rid of yeast infections, control food allergies, reduce adult onset diabetes and other sensitivities. It really is quite simple: we need to eat more vegetables, fruits, seeds, lean proteins, complex carbohydrates and grains and cut down on highly processed simple carbohydrates, fatty proteins and refined sugars.
Here's a simple set of bullets to follow:
- Eat more vegetables of any kind. Don't hold back.
- Eat more fruit of any kind (but keep to 2 pieces a day if you are battling a yeast infection)
- Eat whole grains where possible.
- Animal proteins are fine as long as they are low fat.
- Avoid processed food that contain partially hydrogenated fat, coloring sugars or other ingredients that you can't buy in a standard grocery store.
- Consume good oils.
- Limit your intake of sugar, syrup and other refined carbohydrate.
- Its good practice to take a good quality vitamin and mineral supplement.
- A course of probiotics is also a good way to balance the natural flora in your gut and promote efficient digestion (see more on probiotics over at FungusFacts).
Filed under Diets by on Dec 14th, 2011.
Some people who have been diagnosed with celiac disease are giving the paleo diet, or caveman diet, a try. It makes sense because people with celiac disease already need to follow a strict gluten-free diet so they already need to avoid many products made with the more typical grains like wheat, rye and barley. But is this the right choice for everyone?
This, of course, is a very personal question. The paleo or caveman diet focuses on foods that humans ate during the early, or caveman, years. This low carb diet focuses on meat, fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts and roots. It excludes things like grains, beans, dairy, rice, processed oils, salt and refined sugar which humans started adding to their diet later on when they became readily available. The idea of getting back to the basics sounds good and it would do most of us some good to give up or cut down on at least some of these items.
This diet has resonated for some people with celiac disease or celiac symptoms because they have already had damage done to their body from eating grains -- specifically grains containing gluten. Many people who have been diagnosed with celiac disease have already suffered from a variety of symptoms that have been misdiagnosed for years. Once they stop eating gluten-containing grains they start feeling so much better the idea of giving up more grains definitely sounds appealing.
While the paleo diet has worked for some people with celiac disease, it's not the only option available. Giving up foods containing gluten is necessary, but most people with celiac disease can handle beans and grains like rice and quinoa just fine. It isn't necessary to give up other non-gluten containing grains unless there is another sensitivity present.
The paleo diet is an option for people diagnosed with celiac disease, but it's not the only option.
Filed under Diets by on Dec 8th, 2011.
I recently decided to turn my attention away from how to invest in the stock market and give some thought to diets and why they work [or do not work as the case may be]. It strikes me that two of the most constant features associated with most diets are that, observed with discipline, they will let you lose weight and that the majority of people on these diets will cheat in some way. More than a question of discipline, it involves a number of other factors.
These factors involve boredom, what you are normally used to eating as well as the timing of your diet. For instance, if you are a weight lifter used to a large protein intake to build muscle, you would find it difficult to give up this diet if you are not in training. Even if a diet allows you to eat food that you find tasty [for instance, the Atkins diet encourages you to eat things like butter and bacon], it is in human nature to find forbidden fruit much tastier. This is why many diets fail because people find them far too restrictive when followed for any length of time. You can go to a spa for a little while, drink lots of water, eat sparingly and exercise resulting in loss of weight. However, soon after you get home, the lost weight returns to haunt you.
And these spas and low-calorie food manufacturers have no interest in offering you a permanent solution because they want you to come back time after time. Diets and weight loss programs are, after all, major money spinners. It appears that the key to permanent weight control is to consider the long-term approach that incorporates diet, exercise and your lifestyle. Because there are so many ways to cut down on your calories, the use of common sense by way of eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, cutting back on processed foods and eating smaller portions is probably the best way to go.
Filed under Diets by on Dec 5th, 2011.
I am sure you have heard of the Caveman Diet. The basic premice is that our ancestors evolved eating a certain type of food and thus this is the diet we should be eating now. The idea is that cavemen did not have any sugar or processed foods so we should limit them in our diet also. This diet plays right into the low carb foods diets that are being touted now.
Low carb diets are high in the percentages of fat, protein, and non starchy vegetables. It makes sense that these are going to be the foods that our ancestors ate. Potatoes are from the new world and they really didn't become the tubers we know now until agregarian societies started to show up about 10,000 years ago. The same thing with corn which is a dense, high carb food. You can't even eat the natural corn cobs that were found and turned into the big ears we see today.
Also, breads were no where to be found and in fact grains and cereals were again not prevelant until people settled down and started to grow crops. This lead to selective breeding which gave us the big wheat and rye we see blowing in the wind now.
What these people did eat was meat. Either they killed the animal to eat it or they just happed onto a kill from a big cat or other predator. Either way, this was feast time and the entire tribe took part.
Actually, our obesity problem didn't start raising its ugly head until the last few decades when we started processing most of our food and adding sugar. I believe there is a correlation. As we moved away from meat and toward these processed foods, our rates for being overweight and obese skyrocketed. I don't think this a coincidence. Instead, I think this new diet that got away from what cavement ate is the cause.
Filed under Diets by on Dec 1st, 2011.
A lot of times it is mentioned that if you want to live a healthy lifestyle, you really should not drink too much caffeine. While that advice might be solid, I don´t feel there is anything wrong with having the occasional cup of coffee.
I used to be a huge coffee addict but now I only have one cup a day. I have to say though, I make the best of that one cup and usually make a true cappuccino, simply because I love it. In order to make the froth, I was always using full fat milk, thinking that would give the true creamy aspect and a full froth.
However, when I started making small changes to my diet, trying to adapt to a more wholesome and healthy way of living, I was worried that making the switch to low fat milk, would instantly kill the froth.
To my surprise though, it turned out that my milk frother was actually giving me far better results with the low fat milk, creating far more froth that would hardly collapse at all. The reason I got one of the luxury brands milk frothers, is that I feel you should get the best out of life. So in a way, my healthy lifestyle has lead me to make a better cappuccino froth and lose some of the calories along the way.
Filed under Diets by on Nov 25th, 2011.
If you are someone who has successfully been able to not only lose weight but keep it off over a long period of time, there could be a potential business out of this experience. Just look around the net at some of the weight loss ads. Most of them use some story about some person who found the secret of losing weight. You can make money from home simply by educating people on how you actually lost the weight.
We all know that there really isn't a secret. Losing weight comes down to eating less and exercising more. However, for whatever reason, there are still plenty of people who will be willing to pay to learn exactly how you did it. You could give tips on what types of food to eat and what sort of exercise routines to perform. You could even give some mental help for people who keep feeling discouraged and so on. You don't even have to sell a product to make money with this. If you create a site and get enough traffic, you could make money from ads. You could also choose to create an e-book and sell that as well but unless you really have some crazy diet secret, it's probably better to just stick with giving free advice.
Filed under Diets by on Nov 17th, 2011.
Yeast infections affect both men and women, although women are generally more susceptible. There is a general misconception that infections are limited to superficial parts of the body and can easily be cleared up using an antifungal cream. While this may be the case for mild infections, studies have indicated that for chronic, re-current or severe infections that express themselves superficially on the body, the sufferer will also typically have an overgrowth of the Candida yeast species in their gastric intestinal tract.
Often referred to as intestinal candida, this form of yeast infection cannot be cleared up using topical medicine alone. For this dietary changes are needed. We've included a series of bullets below to describe what would constitute a candida diet (also known as a yeast free diet).
- At the heart of a Candida diet is a reduced intake of sugar. All forms of simple sugars are to be avoided as these are what the Candida yeast feeds on.
- Many diet plans also recommend avoiding fermented foods such as vinegar, blue cheeses as well as any foods containing yeasts.
- All forms of meat and vegetables are encouraged on a yeast free diet.
- It makes good sense to take a course of probiotic supplements to help re-balance the microflora in the gut. This is because beneficial bacteria can play a role in reducing the overgrowth of candida.
Filed under Diets by on Nov 10th, 2011.
