Tony Horton: Miserable While Eating

Tony Horton: Miserable While Eating

Maybe the reason why you can't change to a healthy diet is because food has become this profound visceral experience every time you sit down to a meal. Flavor and texture are the king and queen in your mouth, palate, taste buds and especially your brain. You can't go from a diet loaded with yummy fat, sugar, salt and chemicals to bland old steamed vegetables and quinoa because the eating experience will no longer provide the kind of pleasure you expect from eating.

Starting a diet is easy. Desire to change and the intentions that go with it are strong at first. The trigger could be the image in the mirror you despise. Maybe it's the impact of how walking up a simple flight of stairs feels like a triathlon. You say enough is enough, and begin the process (again) of choosing a diet. When you do, you have to give up something. Something you love: portions or flavor or both. Some folks never get past the first day while others can hang in there for years. Both fail in the end because eating feels like that job you hate. How long do you want to suffer? How long do you want to feel deprived? How much longer can you tolerate being miserable while eating?

Changing your eating habits is no different than starting a workout regime. Both are difficult at first. It gets easier with time and becomes enjoyable if your purpose is clear. Fitness is fun and effective when you combine variety, intensity, consistency with purpose, a plan and accountability. It's hard if you only focus on how you want to look in front of other people. You can stick with a healthy eating plan when you find ways to make fruits, veggies, whole grains, lean proteins and healthy fats taste good! A weight loss-only diet plan fails every time because being miserable while eating now with the hope that you look better later will make you sad, depressed and crazy!

You also need a plan for when you travel and you need to find restaurants that provide healthy whole meals that you look forward to eating. If you love to cook -- start throwing out old recipes that make you and your family fat and start preparing yummy ones that make everyone happy and healthy. If you don't cook then learn. Learn how to cook 10 fast healthy meals. You can do that. After that, figure out who delivers the good stuff on days you don't feel like cooking. Learn how to navigate a grocery store. Cut way back on all processed foods that come in a bag, box, bottle or can and buy more foods with just one ingredient; blueberries, carrots, spinach, kale, onions, watermelon.

You get the idea. The only way you're going to live the life you deserve is through fitness and a healthy diet. Everything else is smoke and mirrors. You want to find the fountain of youth? Here it is... healthy food and fitness first before everything else. Exercise is fitness and food is health. You can stay miserable or you can join the revolution, it's up to you!

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Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Norway Is Running Out Of Butter

Norway Is Running Out Of Butter

You guys, this is an emergency.

Norway is running out of butter.

Reuters reported that a diet craze involving low carbs and high fat is partially to blame for a butter shortage in the European nation, which will likely spell trouble as the holiday season fast approaches.

"Sales all of a sudden just soared, 20 percent in October then 30 percent in November," Lars Galtung, the head of communications at TINE, Norway's biggest farmer-owned cooperative, told Reuters.

Now, the ingredient is being sold on Norway's leading auction website for $13 for a 8.28-pound piece, Reuters reported, which is about four times higher than its normal price.

In combination with the popular diet, Norway's The Foreigner reports that issues with with bad weather and decreased milk production from cows also factor into the butter shortage.

The Foreigner reported:

Norway's butter, cream, and bacon shortage was previously thought just to have been due to low carb diets. However, the cows have produced 20 million fewer litres of milk this year compared with 2010.

The Telegraph reports some other famous food shortages of months and years past, including a purple broccoli shortage in Britain earlier this year, and a 2004 cocoa shortage attributed to less-than-ideal harvests in the Ivory Coast, which is responsible for providing 40 percent of the world's cocoa stocks.

And of course, we can't forget about the disappearing bees, which spells trouble not only for honey supply, but also for pollination of important crops, like fruits, vegetables, cotton and coffee.

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Melatonin dosage and side effects

Melatonin dosage and side effects

Written by Jaime Olivera on December 2nd, 2011

An alternative to sleeping pills is melatonin. This hormone is marketed as an over-the-counter drug and sold as a dietary supplement in the United States. Melatonin is produced by the pineal gland mainly at night to facilitate sleep, and it also helps with dreaming and the sleep cycle. People who are suffering from sleeping problems caused by insufficient melatonin can benefit from taking melatonin supplements.

It is important to figure out what is the suitable melatonin dosage for your own body’s needs. No one is the same and our physiologic needs are different. A general guideline is to start with a very low dosage and then if it doesn’t work after several nights, to switch to a higher dose.

Side effects can occur if you take too much melatonin. Melatonin side effects such as headaches and dull drowsiness are the result of taking excessive melatonin. Some people can tolerate larger doses while others cannot.

Source: www.newpublichealth.com

'Love Hormone' May Buffer Kids From Mom's Depression

'Love Hormone' May Buffer Kids From Mom's Depression
FRIDAY, Dec. 9 (HealthDay News) -- Children born to mothers with postpartum depression are at increased risk for mental health problems, but a hormone called oxytocin may reduce the risk, according to a new study.
Source: news.yahoo.com

Trouble At The Hazelden Hotel

Trouble At The Hazelden Hotel

The Fix:

When Hazelden's posh new New York sober house was held up by red tape, the facility checked young addicts into nearby hotels. The result? Overdoses, relapses, and months of woefully lax supervision. Did the titan of treatment drop the ball?

Read the whole story: The Fix

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

The Blackest Black Hole: Scientists Find a Monster the Size of 21 Billion Suns

The discovery of two new black holes, each about 330 million light-years away or so, was just announced in the journal Nature. The smaller of the two is nearly 30% bigger than anything we've ever seen before Read more

Could Breast Cancer Screening Cause More Harm Than Good?

Could Breast Cancer Screening Cause More Harm Than Good?

Breast cancer screening in the UK may be causing more harm than good, according to new research.

Experts found women may be likely to be harmed by the programme and undergo unnecessary surgery, especially in the first decade of being screened.

James Raftery, professor of health technology assessment at the University of Southampton, led the new study which examined data from the 1986 Forrest report.

The Forrest report, which led to the introduction of breast cancer screening in the UK, determined the benefits of screening in terms of quality adjusted life years or QALYs (a measure of quantity and quality of life).

It found about 3,000 QALYs in terms of lives saved over a 20-year period for every 100,000 women who were invited for screening. But at the 10-year mark, the number of QALYs stood at only about 1,000.

In the new analysis, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Prof Raftery and his colleague Maria Chorozoglou included estimates of the risk of women being harmed, which were not included in the Forrest report.

Harms include false positives (abnormal results that turn out to be normal) and over-treatment (treatment or surgery on harmless cancers that would never have caused symptoms or death during a patient's lifetime).

The new research found that once harms were included, the QALY benefit in terms of lives saved was only 1,500 QALYs after 20 years - half the figures quoted in Forrest. And, in the first few years of screening, women were, on average, more likely to be harmed than to see any benefit.

Prof Raftery said: "At up to eight years, the harms generally outweigh the benefits but at 20 years there are greater positive benefits. Nevertheless, either way, the benefit to patients is less than was stated in Forrest."

He said the vast majority of women undergoing surgery to remove a suspected cancer did not actually need the treatment.

Source: www.huffingtonpost.co.uk