Q&A

A truly healthy bread contains all parts of the wheat grain: the bran, germ, and endosperm. This bread has a double, triple, and in some cases, even quadruple nutritional value compared to its refined namesakes.

If we eat such bread with fresh fruits, vegetables, potatoes, or legumes we can get a rich and nutritious meal that will make you feel satiated, and that contributes to the maintenance of a fixed level of energy over a longer period of time. Buy solid bread which is not inflated with air. Use whole wheat flour. Bread made from pressed wheat germ is excellent.

WHITE FLOUR, from pretzels or bagels, are quickly digested and will soon leave us with almost the same lack of energy, as well as chocolate.  To make white flour, manufacturers remove the germ and bran (along with 80 percent of the fiber and most of the nutrients), then send the stripped grains through the mill. White flours usually get a dose of B vitamins, folic acid, and iron during processing., this fortification process replaces up some of the lost nutrient content, but the flour is still missing many healthy compounds such as antioxidants and phytonutrients

INTEGRAL BLACK BREAD – provides the body with fuel that can last for hours, which means that you’ll feel that you have the energy a lot longer. Food manufactures exploit this loophole and often process grain as white flour, then add the germ and bran back in.

What’s with enriched flour and enriched bread? During the processing of wheat from the flour are removed 24 known vitamins and minerals.

When it was concluded that, as a result of commercial production, illnesses associated with a lack of these nutrients have emerged, a special mixture of enriched flour appeared on the market. In many countries, the bakery is still not obliged to use such flour or to submit the specification. However, even when using such enriched flour, not all the drawbacks in them are supplemented. Evidently, it adds a few lost ingredients such as thiamin, riboflavin, niacin and iron. Nevertheless, the enriched white bread with its value can never be compared to the integral bread.

Enriched flour is flour in which the most natural vitamins and minerals are extracted. This is done to give the bread a finer texture and increase in shelf life. When the bran and germ are removed (parts of wheat-containing fiber and nutrients), the body absorbs differently wheat. Instead of being a slow process that gives us a stable dose of energy, our body breaks down enriched flour fast, which typically raises blood sugar quickly. This excess blood sugar must be metabolized in the liver and if there is excess sugar, your body will store it as fat. In other words, enriched flour sounds healthy, but is not healthy.

The whole-wheat flour or whole wheat flour grains should be the first ingredient on the label of our bread because they are enriched with dietary fibers, antioxidants, proteins, minerals – magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and selenium – together with niacin, vitamin B6 and vitamin E. When eating cereal, you reduce the risk of certain cancers, coronary heart disease, diseases of the digestive system, diabetes and obesity.

• A low-carbohydrate dietminimizes sugars and starches, replacing them with foods rich in protein and healthy fats.
• “Real food”means choosing foods that humans had access to throughout evolution. Processed, unnatural foods with artificial chemicals are avoided.

LCRF is not a “diet.” It is a way of eating, a lifestyle change based on bulletproof scientific evidence.

It is a way of eating that emphasizes the foods humans have evolved to eat for hundreds of thousands of years, before the agricultural and industrial revolutions.

This type of diet is proven to work better than the low-fat diet still recommended all around the world.

It is based on scientific research, not ethics, religion or a preconceived notion of what a healthy diet should be like.

What Not to Eat

You should Limit the following foods.

• Sugar: Added sugar is addictive, fattening and a leading cause of diseases like obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
• Grains: Avoid grains if you need to lose weight, including bread and pasta. Gluten grains (wheat, spelt, barley and rye) are the worst. Healthier grains like rice and oats are fine if you don’t need to lose weight.
• Seed- And Vegetable Oils: Soybean oil, corn oil and some others. These are processed fats with a high amount of Omega-6 fatty acids, which are harmful in excess.
• Trans Fats: Chemically modified fats that are extremely bad for health. Found in some processed foods.
• Artificial Sweeteners: Despite being calorie free, observational studies show a correlation with obesity and related diseases If you must use sweeteners, choose Stevia.
• “Diet” and “Low-Fat” Products: Most of these “health foods” aren’t healthy at all. They tend to be highly processed and loaded with sugar or artificial sweeteners. Agave syrup is just as bad as sugar.
• Highly Processed Foods: Foods that are highly processed are usually low in nutrients and high in unhealthy and unnatural chemicals.

You must read ingredient lists. You’ll be surprised at the amount of “health foods” that can contain sugar, wheat and other harmful ingredients.

Healthy Foods to Eat

You should eat natural, unprocessed foods that humans are genetically adapted to eating. Research shows that such foods are great for health.

For healthy people who exercise and don’t need to lose weight, there is absolutely no proven reason to avoid tubers like potatoes and sweet potatoes, or healthier non-gluten grains like oats and rice.

If you are overweight or have metabolic issues (low HDL, high LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, belly fat, etc.) you should restrict all high-carb foods

• Meat: Beef, lamb, pork, chicken, etc. Humans have eaten meat for hundreds of thousands of years. Unprocessed meat is good for you, especially if the animals ate natural foods (like beef from grass-fed cows).
• Fish: Fish is great. Very healthy, fulfilling and rich in omega-3 fatty acids and other nutrients. You should eat fish (preferably fatty fish like salmon) every week.
• Eggs: Eggs are among the most nutritious foods on the planet. The yolk is the most nutritious and healthiest part. Omega-3 eggs are best.
• Vegetables: Contain fiber and many nutrients that are essential for the human body. Eat vegetables every day.
• Fruit: Increase variety, taste good, are easy to prepare and rich in fiber and vitamin C. They’re still pretty high in sugar, so eat in moderation if you need to lose weight.
• Nuts and Seeds: Almonds, walnuts, sunflower seeds, etc. Rich in various nutrients, but very high in calories. Eat in moderation if you need to lose weight.
• Potatoes: Root vegetables like potatoes and sweet potatoes are healthy, but they’re still high in carbs. Eat in moderation if you need to lose weight.
• High-Fat Dairy: Cheese, cream, butter, full-fat yogurt, etc. Rich in healthy fats and calcium. Dairy from grass-fed cows will be rich in vitamin K2, which is very important for health
• Fats and Oils: Olive oil, butter, lard, etc. Choose saturated fats for high-heat cooking like pan frying, they are more stable in the heat.

What to Drink?

• Coffee: Coffee is healthy and very rich in antioxidants, but people who are sensitive to caffeine should avoid it. Avoid coffee late in the day because it can ruin your sleep.
• Tea: Tea is healthy, rich in antioxidants and has a lot less caffeine than coffee.
• Water: You should drink water throughout the day and especially around workouts. No reason to drink a whole ton though, thirst is a pretty reliable indicator of your need.
• Simple rule: Don’t drink calories.

Consume in Moderation

These indulgences can be enjoyed from time to time.

• Dark Chocolate: Choose organic chocolate with 70% cocoa or more. Dark chocolate is rich in healthy fats and antioxidants.
• Alcohol: Choose dry wines and drinks that don’t contain added sugar or carbs: vodka, whiskey, etc.

How Many Carbs Per Day?

This varies between individuals.

Many people feel best eating very little carbs (under 50 grams) while others eat as much as 150 grams, which is still low-carb.

You can use these numbers as a guideline:

• 10-20 grams per day: Very low, can’t eat any carbs except low-carb vegetables. Appropriate if you have a lot of weight to lose or if you have diabetes and/or the metabolic syndrome.
• 20-50 grams per day: If you need to lose weight fast. You can eat quite a bit of vegetables and one piece of fruit per day.
• 50-150 grams per day: If you want to achieve optimal health and lower your risk of lifestyle-related disease. There is room for several fruits per day and even a little bit of healthy starches like potatoes and rice.

When you lower carbohydrates below 50 grams per day, you can’t eat any sugar, bread, pasta, grains, potatoes and a maximum of one fruit per day.

Warning for Diabetics: Carbs in the diet are broken down into glucose in the digestive tract, then they enter the body as blood sugar. If you eat less carbs, you will need less insulin and glucose-lowering drugs.

It is very dangerous if your blood sugar drops below a certain level (hypoglycaemia). If you have diabetes, consult with your doctor before reducing carbohydrate intake.

Why Does it Work?

Humans evolved as hunter-gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years.

Our diet changed drastically in the agricultural revolution, about 10,000 years ago.

However, this change is small compared to the massive transformation we’ve seen in the last few decades with modern food processing.

It is quite clear that humans today are eating a diet that is very different from the diet our ancestors thrived on throughout evolution.

There are several “primitive” populations around the world that still live as hunter-gatherers, eating natural foods. These people are lean, in excellent health and most of the diseases that are killing western populations by the millions are rare or non-existent.

Studies show that when people eat natural foods that were available to our hunter-gatherer ancestors (also known as the paleolithic diet), they lose weight and see massive improvements in health

The Hormone Insulin

The hormone insulin is well known for its role of moving glucose from the blood and into cells. A deficiency in insulin, or resistance to its effects, causes diabetes.

But insulin also has other roles in the body. Insulin tells fat cells to produce fat and to stop breaking down the fat that they carry. When insulin levels are high, the body chooses not to dip in to the fat stores to provide energy.

On a western, high-carb diet, insulin levels are high all the time, keeping the fat safely locked away in the fat cells.

Carbs are the main driver of insulin secretion. A low carb diet lowers and balances blood sugar and therefore lowers insulin levels

When insulin goes down, the body can easily access the calories stored in the fat cells, but it can take a few days to adapt to burning fat instead of carbs.

Low carbohydrate diets are very satiating. Appetite goes down and people start to automatically eat fewer calories than they burn, which causes weight loss.

The main advantage of a low-carb diet is that you can eat until fullness and lose weight without counting calories. Eat low-carb and you avoid the worst side effect of calorie restricted diets: hunger.

Health Benefits of a Low Carb Diet

It is a common misunderstanding, even among health professionals, that low-carb diets are somehow bad for health. People who make such claims obviously haven’t bothered to check out the research.

Their main argument is that low-carb diets are bad because they’re high in saturated fat, which raises cholesterol and causes heart disease.

But recent research suggests that there is nothing to worry about. Saturated fats raise HDL (the good) cholesterol and change the “bad” cholesterol from small, dense LDL (very bad) to large LDL which is benign.

The fact is that saturated fat does not cause heart disease. This is simply a myth that has never been proven.

Low-carb diets actually lead to more weight loss and further improvements in risk factors compared to a low-fat diet.

• Body Fat: A low-carb diet, eaten until fullness, usually causes more fat loss than a low-fat diet that is calorie restricted.
• Blood Sugar: One of the hallmarks of diabetes and the metabolic syndrome is an elevated blood sugar, which is very harmful over the long term. Low-carb diets lower blood sugar.
• Blood Pressure: If blood pressure is high, it tends to go down on a low-carb diet.
• High Triglycerides: These are fats that circulate around in the blood and are a strong risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Low-carb diets lower triglycerides much more than low-fat diets.
• HDL (the good) Cholesterol: Generally speaking, having more of the “good” cholesterol means you have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. Low-carb diets raise HDL cholesterol much more than low-fat diets.
• sdLDL (the bad) Cholesterol: Low-carb diets cause LDL cholesterol to change from small, dense LDL (bad) to large LDL, which is benign.
• Easier: Low-carb diets appear to be easier to stick to than low-fat diets, probably because it isn’t necessary to count calories and be hungry, which is arguably the worst side effect of dieting.

The statements above have been shown to be true in randomized controlled trials – scientific studies that are the gold standard of research.

Common Low-Carb Side Effects in The Beginning

When carbs in the diet are replaced with protein and fat, several things need to happen for the body to efficiently use fat as fuel.

There will be major changes in hormones and the body needs to ramp up production of enzymes to start burning primarily fat instead of carbs. This can last for a few days and full adaptation may take weeks.

Common side effects in the first few days include:

• Headache
• Feeling Lightheaded
• Tiredness
• Irritability
• Constipation

Side effects are usually mild and nothing to worry about. Your body has been burning mostly carbs for decades, it takes time to adapt to using fat as the primary fuel source.

This is called the “low carb flu” and should be over within 3-4 days.

On a low-carb diet, it is very important to eat enough fat. Fat is the new source of fuel for your body. If you eat low-carb and low-fat, then you’re going to feel bad and abandon the whole thing.

Another important thing to be aware of is that insulin makes the kidneys hold on to sodium. When you eat less carbs, the kidneys release sodium. This is one of the reasons people lose so much bloat and water weight in the first few days.

To counteract this loss of sodium you can add more salt to your food or drink a cup of broth every day. A bouillon cube dissolved in a cup of hot water contains 2 grams of sodium.

Many people say they feel better than ever on a low-carb diet, when the initial adaptation period is over.

source: https://authoritynutrition.com/how-to-eat-healthy/

There are all sorts of popular diets out there. Atkins. Weight Watchers. Zone. South Beach. Paleo. Bulletproof. Americans spend some $60 billion a year in pursuit of the magic formula that will finally help them shed extra pounds for good.

There’s just one problem. Scientists can’t find evidence that any of these highly restrictive diets work very well over the long term.

Recently a team of Harvard-affiliated researchers tried to sift through all the best available evidence and see whether low-fat diets — in which 30 percent or fewer calories came from fat — work better than those that are higher in fat (including low-carb). What they found was that all diets seemed to be equally ineffective.

In the study, published today in the journal Lancet, the typical weight loss was about 7 pounds — an amount that researchers consider insignificant because most study participants were overweight or obese to begin with, and intended to lose many pounds. What’s more, the dieters were only followed for a year, and the researchers noted that most people regained the weight after that. All this despite „concerted efforts among motivated clinical trial participants and staff,“ the authors wrote.

The results are so abysmal, in fact, that doctors are now at a loss about what specific advice they should give people who want to lose weight. „Practically, the study tells us what we shouldn’t be doing,“ says lead author Deirdre Tobias, a doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. „But,“ she added, „we don’t conclude with what we should be doing.“

That squares with the findings of otherhigh-quality studies that compare different and find people lose only a few pounds long term no matter what they try.

„All diets lead to unimpressive weight loss after one year,“ Kevin Hall a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, told Vox. „People tend to be fine for the first three to six months, then plateau their body weight, and then regain the weight for the next few months.“

Never diet

Dr. Tobias said her research suggests that people need to look beyond restricting certain macronutrients (like fat or protein or carbohydrates) and instead try to incorporate healthy foods into their diets. That’s the direction some countries are going in with their dietary guidelines, and it squares with the advice I’ve gotten from just about every diet expert I’ve ever spoken to.

But eating that way won’t necessarily lead to miraculous weight loss, either. Hall pointed out that there’s little high-quality evidence that „whole food diets“ work for weight loss, and, more important, people have a lot of difficulty sticking to new eating patterns of any kind over the longer term. „What seems to be clear is that long-term diet adherence is abysmal, irrespective of whether low-fat or other diets, such as low-carbohydrate diets, are prescribed,“ he wrote in a Lancet commentary related to the study.

There is, however, lots of evidence that what you eat matters for health, and poor diets impact everything from your risk of cancer and heart disease to your overall risk of death.

The science is clear: They don’t work.

Diet programs that don’t offer any one-on-one attention or a support system of readily accessible peers are basically just trying to sell you something that works only for the obsessively dedicated. This is where nutritionist and health coach, have taken front and center. We offer support and one-on-one guidance to help you make changes that are sustainable for a lifetime.

source: http://www.vox.com/2015/10/29/9639982/low-fat-high-protein-diet

They are especially effective in losing kg because they act as probiotics and feed the body.

– Helps control weight – beta-glycan, which is a part of oatmeal, reduces appetite by increasing the hormone cholecystokinin.

– It controls the pressure of the blood – a diet rich in whole grain cereals (oats, buckwheat), to some extent has the effect of medicaments against high blood pressure.

– Reduces cholesterol – 3 g per day of soluble dietary fiber can reduce cholesterol to 20%. A cup of oats has 4g of soluble dietary fiber.

– Protects the skin – if you look at the composition of some cream for the body or face, you would see that they are composed of oats. Plant fiber in oats, make a film that helps maintain skin moisture, and oat bran removes dead skin cells (peeling).

– Reduces the risk of developing colon cancer – every 10g of fiber added to one’s diet, reduces the risk of obtaining colon carcinoma by 10%.

– Controls the blood sugar level – it is already mentioned, that the plenty of soluble fiber in the composition of oat, allows easy release of glucose into the blood stream (a low glycemic index) and provides a longer feeling of satiety.

– Sports abilities – high levels of carbohydrates and protein, enables to gain the healthy energy needed for achieving better physical abilities.

– Increases immunity – oat beta-glycan, help neutrophils (blood elements) to quickly act on the bacterial infection.

– Supports the sleep – oats contain melatonin and complex carbohydrates which help that more tryptophan enters to the brain cells, and thus leads to faster sleep. One of the vitamins in the composition of the oat is B6, a cofactor in the production of serotonin in the brain.

– Promotes antioxidant properties – avenanthramide is a phenolic alkaloid that is unique to oats. The antioxidant reduces inflammation and promotes the production of nitric oxide, which prevents damage to the artery.

What is extremely good for the organization, and I think it would be helpful in the morning to get ready faster:

Porridge is good to make the evening before and leave it in the refrigerator until the next morning. Except that it is time-saving, by standing overnight it eliminates phytic acid from the grains (can also be done with boiling), which after prolonged use effects some digestive enzymes and leads to disturbances in the metabolism. It also blocks the absorption of zinc, magnesium, copper and iron. So just blend the porridge or soak it in the vegetable milk and leave in the fridge for the morning. You can heat it up in a microwave shortly for 30 sec. When warming food in the microwave it is good to put a few drops of water inside, in order to preserve the nutritious foods with the help of humidification.