Take control of your Energy – Know your Daily Bread! 

Isn’t it amazing how little interest we show into the food we eat? Except that we care how it tastes like. Having our daily bread is a privilege most of us take for granted. But how much do we know about carbohydrates or ‘starches’ and how they affect our bodies? For those of us who have heard the Bible story, food was the Devil’s first weapon to tempt us into self-destruction. And if we don’t learn to understand carbohydrates, this staple food can be deadly for your figure. Handle with care!

I love bread. I always have. Especially the fragrant, home-baked, whole-wheat bread with a golden crust that my mom would bake. When I lived in Germany, first as an Au Pair and again later as a trainee journalist, the bakers on every main street would tempt me with a huge variety of rolls, each with a different name: Lausbub, Milchbrötle, Vollkorn, Dreikorn, Roggenbrötchen, Salzpretzel. Absolutely delicious.  But I soon paid the price: my normally slender body started picking up weight at the speed of bite!

http://easteuropeanfood.about.com/od/breads/tp/ryebreads.htm

When I came back home, no one recognized me. And I had nothing to wear! This is when my quest for knowledge about food started. Now I am a fervent proponent of teaching nutrition in Kindergarten. Because it looks like modern mom’s don’t really have the knowledge they need to teach good eating habits to their babies and toddlers – especially not the most modern, scientific information. This is such a pity: every human child should know what food is good for its body and which food isn’t – regardless of taste.
How much our culture influences our choice of food is something I learnt especially since I’ve become involved in a charity that operates two boarding schools for teenagers, mainly from deep rural South Africa. The kids that attend these schools – one for boys, one for girls – come from homes where they have been taught that a meal without meat is no meal, just a ‘snack’. And that you have to stuff yourself with maize porridge (known here as ‘phutu’) in order to say that you are ‘full’, before you stop eating!
If I look at the rest of the parts of the world where I have been travelling to – the cultural paradigms are different, but the end result is the same: far too much carbohydrates and fat! In the USA, kids grow up on cereal with milk and MacDonald Burgers. In Europe, far too many are now also resorting to similar eating habits. Just a few weeks ago, in July, when I visited my godchild in Germany, his father was lamenting the fact that mothers in his daughter’s swimming class would come to him and sternly admonish him that his daughter was too skinny! He remembers from his childhood that all kids were wiry and athletic. Now the majority of primary school children is already showing signs of obesity!
Yes, we certainly need carbohydrates in our diet. This is the fuel for our muscles. So, especially if we are highly active, physically, we do need a lot of this type of food, in all its different forms: bread, cereals, pasta, and so on.
Children have much more energy than we do, because their bodies are not yet burdened with the bad eating habits that we as adults have adopted, usually from our own parents. Looking at the history of food, and just understanding my own ancestor’s eating habits, over-eating was simply not on the order of the day. Something happened after World War II, when it comes to our diets. Suddenly, all kinds of new artificial foodstuffs entered the mainstream: colouring, flavouring, preservatives. And television brought all of this ‘wonderful’ new food and these new tastes into our homes. So, of course, our diets changed!
Having white bread from the bakery in town became a special treat for us farm kids, who were used to the whole wheat bread baked by mom at home. If it had stayed a special treat, that would have been OK. But with urbanization and becoming further and further removed from the source of our food, white bread – wheat – has become the staple food of far too many human beings across the world.
There is nothing wrong with wheat – if you eat it in moderation. Like with most other things: if you don’t overeat, you’re generally fine, health- and weight-wise.
But when it comes to wheat, especially white wheat flour, there is a BIG ‘However’.
White wheat flour – like any other type of ‘refined’ grain where the healthy fibre, vitamins and minerals has been practically ‘surgically removed’ – is actually nothing but a slightly different form of sugar. Now imagine eating solid pieces of sugar, like we eat slices of white bread or rolls…
I didn’t know this, until I started researching the impact of the different food types on our bodies, mind and emotions. And yes, even on our spirit. Drugs affect our spirit. But that is a story for another day…
Today I just want you to become very aware of the fact that ‘refined’ wheat has the same effect of ‘refined’ sugar, if not treated in moderation. It makes the blood sugar levels shoot up high, resulting in more and more Insulin being released from our Pancreas (remember this organ from Biology class?) and in this way over time affects our bodies ability to regulate its sugar levels, too often resulting in adult-onset diabetes!
If you are a labourer who needs to do heavy manual labour, or if you are an athlete or go to gym every day, you can eat quite a lot of carbohydrates each day, because your body burns this ‘sugar’ as fuel to keep your muscles going.
However, if you are someone who spends much of your time sitting or just do moderate physical activity, you need to be careful with the amount of fuel you put in your body. Because every little gram of carbohydrates that you do not use on that day is turned by your body into sugar and from there into fat. Fat on our bodies is nothing but a ‘storage area’ – a ‘larder’ – for those days when we may need to fall back on this reserve. However, with our current blessed lifestyles, the chances that we will not have food tomorrow, has really shrunk to a minimum, so we also don’t need to store huge reserves of fat on our bodies. The problem with fat is that it causes excessive weight on our bone structure, pulling us down even further than gravity normally would, and also placing a lot of strain on the heart, which now suddenly has to feed a whole new layer of bodymass (pure fat) with blood. Fat sits directly below our skin, so if the heart is not able to work properly any longer, the blood struggles to reach our skin, and this has all kinds of effects on the well-being of our bodies. Just do some of your own research on this on the Internet and you will be amazed at how important it is to keep the fat layer under our skin at a lower range.
The other thing that we should become aware of is that wheat contains a material called ‘gluten’. Gluten is a form of proteien, that is easily digestible for most people, but over the last couple of years – probably because of humans over-eating wheat – an increasing number of people are becoming intolerant to this food, with a variety of symptoms ranging from chronic diarhoeaa and ongoing tiredness. The biggest problem is that in these  instances, the gluten prevents the digestive system from properly absorbing nutrients, like vitamins and minerals, resulting in malnutrition.
I’m not suggesting that you rush off to get a Gluten allergy test. I am, however, encouraging you to learn more about carbohydrates and how you can ensure that you and the people you prepare food for, can enjoy the benefits of carbohydrates, without suffering from the disaster of over-eating them.
Also, I am recommending that we all shift away from a wheat-dominated carbohydrate diet to including more different types of carbohydrates, because in this way we can have the benefit of different types of minerals and vitamins.
Let carbohydrates form the ‘backbone’ of your lunch menu for your family and proteien be the main component of your dinners. In order to make sure you keep variety in your lunch menu, here's a suggested list of carbohydrates to use each day:
Mondays – Wheat
This includes any type of wheat bread, pastry, pasta, and couscous.
Tuesdays – Sorghum/Spelt or any other ‘exotic’ grain
Visit your local health-store section in the supermarket to see what’s available and try out new recipes.
Thursdays – Potatoes
This is such a versatile food: mashed, boiled then fried, boiled, baked, chips, potato soup, croquettes
Wednesdays – Oats
Porridge, muffins, crunchy granola biscuits, sautéed oat flakes in salad or as a topping on soup
Fridays – Rye
Rye is known best as bread, but look for recipes for other interesting things to do with rye. There are different types of rye bread too!
Saturday – Corn/Maize
This is ideal for family gatherings. Corn-on-the-cob, nachos, maize bread and other traditional ways of using maize. Combine with beans, like the Mexicans do, avoid meat.
Sunday – Rice
There are lots of different types of rice, so there is already some variety. But then, of course, you can use rice as is, rice cakes, rice dishes, rice-and-soy milk soup with cinnamon and steamed dried fruit. Let your imagination fly!
The main secret that all of us living in the 21^st Century need to know is that it is very easy to over-eat on carbohydrates, because they are a form of sugar and sugar is addictive. So learn more about how you can rid yourself of this addiction and start on a fresh page. Your body will be grateful!

For more help on how to reduce your weight, or how to control your appetite, please contact me for a FREE personal consultation at Reine de la Rose Eco.Spa Wellness & Aesthetics Clinic at 616 Leyds St, Muckleneuk on the Hill in Pretoria, City of Tshwane, South Africa. You may call me on the office line from Wednesdays to Saturdays at 012-3443340 or any other time on my mobile phone at 0828520970. Or simply drop me an email at reinedelarose@gmail.com. Looking forward to meeting you!

Take Control of Your Energy: Know what you eat

If we want to change the world to a better place, we need energy and self-confidence!

So start making the world a better place, by starting to make yourself more energetic and self-confident, by eating the right food in the right way.

All of us living in the 21^st Century need to know is that it is very easy to over-eat or -drink on carbohydrates, because they are a form of sugar and sugar is addictive. So learn more about how you can rid yourself of this addiction and start on a fresh page. Your body will be grateful! And your energy-levels will surge.

You may know that cool-drinks, white bread, chips and sweets are about as low as you can go in terms of food. Yet, far too many parents give their kids some pocket money to buy something at the school tuck shop - not realizing that this is laying the foundation for a life-time of struggle with weight, possibly diabetes, later cholesterol and related heart disease! 

STOP TODAY!

Instead, make sure your kid and the rest of your family understand what I am writing about here:

I was a skinny kid, but I practically lived on my mom's oat crunchies when I was home for the weekends and holidays: sugar and carbohydrates. Because I lived in a hostel my whole school-going life, I had not much control over what I got to eat and generally speaking the hostel food was quite healthy. However, when I was 16 we were allowed to walk to town one afternoon a week and I had some pocket money. This is where my chocolate addiction started. I'd buy a slab of chocolate and eat it up before I was back in the hostel again! During my teenage years this did not affect my weight, since there were a lot of sport activities and I was never a big eater, but in looking back I can see that this 'unthinking' behaviour was the cause for much of my weight problems later in life.

So when I got to university in Pretoria, I discovered that chocolate was my 'comfort food'. Feeling very much 'out of my skin' in the new city environment and missing the structured, safe life of a small farming community, I ended up eating a slab of chocolate a day! Needless to say, my smooth skin broke out and by the end of my first year I had gained 13kg. This had a huge negative effect on my self-image, so I practically withdrew from my old circle of friends, who all seemed to cope so much better and food became my main source of comfort.

Even though I was a medical student at the time, I didn't know that I had triggered my insulin switch by eating too much carbohydrate-rich food, and that as a result, my weight - and because of that - my whole life was starting to spin out of control. From weighing 54kg when I started at university I ended up 24kg heavier at 78kg, when I was 25! So in seven years I had gained about 3.5kg per year. Many people yearn back to the time of their youth, but in my life, the time between 18-25 years of age were the worst years of my life!

Everyone who has been overweight knows the dieting 'yo-yo' that starts with 'food deprivation' and ends with 'binges', and each time we go on a binge, what do we eat? Fruit and vegetables? No! We eat carbohydrates: sugars and starch - usually combined with fat in cookies, chocolates and chips. Guys often go on 'beer binges' - again, beer is sheer carbohydrate. Add to that the alcohol, and the cycle of addiction is complete.

Mercifully, when I was 25 years old when I discovered a book titled Fit for Life written by Harvey & Marilyn Diamond, at Exclusive Books and for the first time I had a source of information that made absolute sense, when it came to food.  One concept that I've never forgotten is that they emphasized that food is the fuel for our body and also the 'material' of which we are made. 'You are what you eat' suddenly made a lot of sense to me. At that time I was a solid piece of chocolate. I preferred to sit down, because I had very little energy.

'Fit for Life' really changed the way I looked at food. I realized that I had started using food for other purposes (comfort), instead of for fuel and that this is why I ended up overweight and low on energy. This couple taught a whole generation of people in the late 80's about the 'Body Clock' - explaining the normal 'rhythm' of our digestive system and what we need to do to help our body handle its 'natural hygiene'. 'Fit For Life' teaches three key secrets to healthy eating habits:

1) Follow your 'Body Clock':
Your body takes in food, digests it, cleans your digestive system, then needs to take a rest. The idea is that you support this rhythm, not confuse it. So, have fruit for breakfast and in the morning, while your digestive system is resting, since this is the most easily digestible food and gives you energy when you need it most. From 12:00 you can eat other foods until about 20:00. Then don't eat after that time, since now the body is trying to digest everything properly. Your body cleans the digestive system from 02:00 in the morning until about 06:00 and then it needs a time to rest the digestive system, until about 12:00 again. And so the cycle continues.

2) Don't mix proteien and carbohydrate:
I can't believe that almost 25 years after this knowledge became available, restaurants STILL do not offer meals where proteien and carbohydrates are not served together! This is the single most effective way of helping your digestive system to work properly, which in turn speeds up your metabolism and really burns off fat. Everyone is still used to the 'old' way of eating meat, potatoes and veggies, instead of adjusting to proper food combining, i.e. combine veggies with carbohydrates and meat with veggies, but don't mix proteien and carbohydrate. Cheese sandwich: NO. Egg, bacon and toast: NO. Hamburgers and chips: NO. It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you've learnt about useful proteiens like beans and other legumes, which can be combined with carbohydrates, life becomes a lot easier.

3) Don't mix fruit with anything else!
To get the full benefits of the vitamins and minerals in God's perfect food - fruit - don't mix it with anything else! The reason for this is that if fruit gets in touch with dairy products, or starches or any other type of food, it starts fermenting in your body, slowing down the digestive process overall and making you feel bloated. Again, this is something we hardly ever find in restaurants, who continue to serve fruit milkshakes or fruit salad and ice cream or apple pie - all things that taste good, but make our bodies sloggish. Fortunately, if we eat fruit on its own, it takes only 30 minutes to shoot through our digestive system. So if you really have to have a coffee or eat a piece of bread, at least wait for half an hour after eating your fruit, so that your body may have the full benefit of the vitamins and minerals and you avoid any feeling of being bloated.

Once I started following these basic principles, my body lost 8kg in the first four weeks and then another 8kg  over the next four months, then my weight stabilised at between 56-58kg. So by the time I was 26 years old, at least I was back at a weight that was normal for me. Also, from that time onward I had more energy than anyone around me! Even better, I never had any weight issue again after that until a few years ago when my lifestyle became extremely stressful and erratic, and I started using Cappucino's, Croissants and Chocolate again as a daily crutch...

I started taking control of my life again a couple of months ago, simply by following the above simple rules and am back to my normal weight again. So I've just again proven - more than 20 years later - that combining food the right way really is the best way to eat!

However, what is interesting is that in recent years it seems as if, while there is no argument about fruit still being the best breakfast food, nutritional science is leaning more and towards avoiding carbohydrates as much as possible, and focusing on eating meals that only contain proteien and veggies.

Dr Johnny Bowden is a nutritionist who teaches that carbohydrates are the culprits in pushing our insulin levels sky-high, which results in us craving sweets and carbohydrates. 

Here is a video in which he explains why he believes that human beings should only eat from the following four food groups: "Anything you can hunt, gather, fish or pluck." - that is fruit, vegetables and proteien. So, basically, avoiding any form of processed foods, including grains that are turned into flour.

As someone who really does not like meat, I'm very happy to know that proteien is also found in non-animal sources, like beans, soya, peas, nuts and mushrooms. But sticking to a vegan diet and still getting enough iron is really impractical, so a bit of fish every now and again, or a bit of chicken or meat for carnivores, is a good idea.

I appreciate this new knowledge, because I could see that, while under stress, I was getting addicted to carbohydrates again. So avoiding carbohydrates altogether seems like a good idea under those circumstances, when your mental and emotional resources are low. You don't want Insulin to start pushing you into negative habits again!

The bottom line is: to have more energy and to help your body to achieve and stay at its ideal weight, know what 'fuel' your body needs and when and how to eat it. Also, don't use food as a 'comforter'. It's just a fuel. Find other ways to handle your stress or frustration or lack of self-confidence or loneliness or disappointments. 

PS: Another interesting thing I've learnt during the past couple of years is that the right nutritional supplements can make a huge difference to how you look and feel! But more about that in my next blog.