Try the Mediterranean Diet!!

The Mediterranean diet is one of the hottest things you can do today as any experienced dieter may tell you. It' quite easy to follow as its less restrictive than other diets and wine consumption is encouraged (with moderation, what did you think?)


Many individuals whether being medical professionals, nutritionists and dieters seem to believe this is the ideal diet if you want to maintain a healthy weight; keep your blood pressure lowered and minimize your risk of coronary heart disease.


I would like to point to the basics of this wonderful and unique diet. Fresh fruits and vegetables reign supreme, a large amount of vegetarian dishes are traditionally prepared with fresh produce, plenty of fish, some poultry and little beef or pork. It does sound extremely healthy and the fact is, they do have fruits and vegetables which are in season year round. As many people know, this isn't the case in Europe and the Unites States. It's not likely for anyone living in these regions to discover organic produce at reasonable prices.


One thing which irritates me when it relates to the Mediterranean diet is that olive oil is considered to be an ultimate source of phenolic compounds. It' known to help reduce cholesterol and decrease the risk of the development of certain types of cancer. It's wonderful to replace animal fat with unprocessed vegetable fat. Olive oil is not the only thing that which can help you if you are after more phenolic compounds in your diet.


Phenolic compounds could be found in berries, prunes, red grapes, red grape juice, kiwifruit, currants, apples, apple juice and tomatoes. A note to any Med diet fan - red wine is not necessary, red grapes and red grapes juice will be just adequate if you aren't comfortable with daily alcohol consumption. The last thing which stands between many of us and this diet is time. This diet can take lot of time.


You must prepare every single meal from fresh produce. If you've ever traveled to that region of the world, you'll notice people true to their roots and traditions cook with fresh produce for every single meal. In addition, it should not be discounted that life on the Mediterranean is generally conducted at a slower pace than life in the United States and Western Europe.


Another important factor of this diet is not only what they eat, but also how they eat it. Many people in the Mediterranean are consuming their healthful meals during a long and relaxing midday break.


Reducing unhealthy stress may help keep your heart healthy and certainly cut down on the amount of stress-induced eating that we do, whether or not we eat Mediterranean food.


A good diet plan will make the transition from a dedicated evening eater to a healthy morning eater seem easy and enjoyable. And the whole purpose of a diet plan is to make life and food enjoyable even when it's served in small, healthy bites. Dieting is supposed to be fun, to make you feel happier, healthier and ready to try even more nice new things in your life!


Resource:

http://www.weightloss-research.com

Bbc News Report on Hoodia Gordonii

Imagine this: an organic pill that kills the appetite and attacks obesity. It has no known side-effects, and contains a molecule that fools your brain into believing you are full.


Deep inside the African Kalahari desert, grows an ugly cactus called the Hoodia. It thrives in extremely high temperatures, and takes years to mature.


The San Bushmen of the Kalahari, one of the world's oldest and most primitive tribes, had been eating the Hoodia for thousands of years, to stave off hunger during long hunting trips.


When South African scientists were routinely testing it, they discovered the plant contained a previously unknown molecule, which has since been christened P 57.


The license was sold to a Cambridgeshire bio-pharmaceutical company, Phytopharm, who in turn sold the development and marketing rights to the giant Pfizer Corporation.



Fortune cactus


A molecule in the cactus makes you feel full


When I traveled to the Kalahari, I met families of the San bushmen.


It is a sad, impoverished and displaced tribe, still unaware they are sitting on top of a goldmine.


But if the Hoodia works, the 100,000 San strung along the edge of the Kalahari will become overnight millionaires on royalties negotiated by their South African lawyer Roger Chennells.


And they will need all the help they can to secure the money.


Currently, many bushmen smoke large quantities of marijuana, suffer from alcoholism, and have neither possessions nor any sense of the value of money.


The truth is no-one has fully grasped what the magic molecule means for their counterparts in the developed world.


Blood sugar


According to the British Heart Foundation 17% of men and 21% of women are obese, while 46% of men and 32% of women are overweight.


So the drug's marketing potential speaks for itself.


Phytopharm's Dr Richard Dixey explained how P.57 actually works:


"There is a part of your brain, the hypothalamus. Within that mid-brain there are nerve cells that sense glucose sugar.



"When you eat, blood sugar goes up because of the food, these cells start firing and now you are full.


"What the Hoodia seems to contain is a molecule that is about 10,000 times as active as glucose.


"It goes to the mid-brain and actually makes those nerve cells fire as if you were full. But you have not eaten. Nor do you want to."



Clinical trials - Dixey organized the first animal trials for Hoodia. Rats, a species that will eat literally anything, stopped eating completely.


When the first human clinical trial was conducted, a morbidly obese group of people were placed in a "phase 1 unit", a place as close to prison as it gets.


All the volunteers could do all day was read papers, watch television, and eat.



Half were given Hoodia, half placebo. Fifteen days later, the Hoodia group had reduced their calorie intake by 1000 a day.



See another viewpoint on this subject - a hoodia gordonii review.



It was a stunning success.



The cactus test


In order to see for ourselves, we drove into the desert, four hours north of Capetown in search of the cactus.


Once there, we found an unattractive plant which sprouts about 10 tentacles, and is the size of a long cucumber.


Each tentacle is covered in spikes which need to be carefully peeled.


The San will finally throw off thousands of years of oppression, poverty, social isolation and discrimination


Roger Chennells, lawyer



Inside is a slightly unpleasant-tasting, fleshy plant.


At about 1800hrs I ate about half a banana size - and later so did my cameraman.


Soon after, we began the four hour drive back to Capetown.


The plant is said to have a feel-good almost aphrodisiac quality, and I have to say, we felt good.


But more significantly, we did not even think about food. Our brains really were telling us we were full. It was a magnificent deception.


Dinner time came and went. We reached our hotel at about midnight and went to bed without food. And the next day, neither of us wanted nor ate breakfast.


I ate lunch but without appetite and very little pleasure. Partial then full appetite returned slowly after 24 hours.


The future


Mr Chennells is ecstatic:

"The San will finally throw off thousands of years of oppression, poverty, social isolation and discrimination.


"We will create trust funds with their Hoodia royalties and the children will join South Africa's middle classes in our lifetime.


"I envisage Hoodia cafes in London and New York, salads will be served and the Hoodia cut like cucumber on to the salad.


"It will need flavoring to counter its unpleasant taste, but if it has no side effects and no cumulative side-effects."


Recommend :

Read out Weight loss pills . Also check out for weight loss diets and weight loss tips

What Do you Mean by Search Engine Optimization

Bringing as many customers as you can to your website is very important.


This seems like it should be easy. But sometimes actually accomplishing this goal is anything but simple. With all the new rules put out by the major search engines, getting your site in front of your customers is often like navigating a very complex and technical maze. We’ve broken down search engine optimization (SEO) into some manageable bites so you can start with the basics.


Let's Start With Keywords


If you have run a keyword report on wrodtracker.com looking for popular Search Engine Optimization terms and come up with a list of the most popular words in your field, you know that you need include these words in your website in order to be seen by the search engines. But what is the best way to do this?


SEO, in Denver and elsewhere used to be very simply a matter of placing keywords in prominent places so when a search engine does its searching, your site is found easily. Search engines operate with spiders, or web crawlers, that crawl through websites and find those that have words most closely matching the words in the search bar of the browser. Keywords in page titles, page descriptions, and what web designers call META tags were the ones that the search engine crawlers looked for.


Knowing this, website designers began to insert keywords in the text at a very high rate. You might have seen an example of this when you read an article that seemed to be incredibly redundant. The content writer was using keywords over and over to attract the attention of web crawlers and therefore, come up at the top of the search results.


Today, this issue has been looked at by search engines like Google, who are looking for websites that are the most user-friendly. And user-friendly does not mean the same thing as keyword dense. Because of this, keyword placement is much more natural. Don’t overload your copy with keywords, and don’t place keywords in your page titles or descriptions nor in your META tags that have nothing to do with the website or content on that page. You will not attract the latest form of web crawler.


Moving On To Links


To achieve even more precise Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Denver businesses online have been known to join linking services or automatic link communities. The idea of using such services has been to increase their ranking on search engines by showing the web crawlers that they are linked to from dozens of other websites. The problem with this is similar to the issue discussed about with keywords.


Today, search engines use a number of factors to rank their results. On top of looking at keyword matches, they also the usability of the site by analyzing the websites that link to it. So if you sell cookware and you have links to your site from catering companies and kitchen supply websites, this is a good sign that your site offers quality information recommended by other professionals.


If you use a linking service that simply sets up reciprocal links between you and random others, such as a pharmacist, the search engine’s spider will see this as a trick to get higher search results and not a suggestion as to the value of your website. So use only relevant links that actually provide a benefit to your customers.



Article Source: Article Base


About the Author:

This article was written by Steve Morris. Mr. Morris runs New Media, a Colorado web design Company located in downtown Denver, Colorado (http://www.NewMediaDenver.com). Mr. Morris is a highly respected Denver Search Engine Optimization specialist, and he constantly develops and stays current with all the latest SEO and Link Building Techniques.


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#1 Reason Weight Loss Efforts Fail

The biggest roadblock to successful weight loss isn't the food you eat and it's not the exercise you do.

It's negative thinking.


Witness this scenario from one of my clients' weight loss journals (used with permission):


I should lose weight.

I ought to lose weight.

I need to go on a diet.


I will start Monday. Mondays are easier. Actually, why should I wait until Monday? I'll start today! It will be awful. It will be terrible but, once I start losing a few pounds, I'll get excited and then I'll be motivated to continue. Isn't that how it works?


7:30 a.m. Black coffee, one hard-boiled egg.


10 a.m. Starving. Oh! Someone brought it donuts!

But I shouldn't have one. Even though I'm starving. I actually feel a little faint. Hey, why does Julie get to eat donuts and I don't? How does she stay thin if she eats donuts? I can't have a donut. I am so fat. Look at her! She's having so much fun. I wonder why I eat a donut and look like a tub of lard and Julie eats whatever she wants and never gains a pound. Life just isn't fair!


11 a.m. It's not lunch time but I am so hungry I could eat a horse. I'm going to the deli and get lunch early. Checked the salads but they look kind of wilted and not too fresh. Looked at the soup list. Nothing I like. There really wasn't anything else to eat so I ordered a cheeseburger and fries, then grabbed a brownie at the checkout.


11:40 a.m. Oh boy do I feel guilty. I am so weak. I have no willpower whatsoever. I was doing so well all morning! I didn't even have a donut! I have really blown it now.


I wonder how many calories were in that cheeseburger I just inhaled? It couldn't have been much, it was small. In fact I'm still hungry. I'll never lose weight. I don't know what's wrong with me. I just can't do anything right.


I don't know how I even survive at this job. I'm completely inept. It's a good thing my boss is oblivious. He doesn't see what an imbecile I am.

I didn't set out in life to be an awful person. I'm not even sure it's my fault. Who can I blame? Oh, that's silly. It's my fault. I'm weak, I'm stupid, I'm inept, I can't do anything right. I'm a blithering idiot...


(end diary entry)


It's easy to see how this kind of downward spiral can take a person from eating a cheeseburger to being "an awful person" in record time. When we "awfulize" situations, people or ourselves, it has a profound effect on our attitude towards life!


Here are some components of negative thinking:


1. Problems are seen as permanent,


2. We identify ourselves as the problem or the cause of the problem, then


3. We begin to feel like the problem is a symbol of personal defectiveness.



I like to contrast the journal entry above with a story of my own. Once, on a trip, I stopped at a cut-rate gas station and filled up my gas tank. A while later, my car started sputtering and acting as if the engine was going to die. It wasn't accelerating smoothly and I felt as though I was put-puttering along while cars all around me sped by. I immediately connected the lack of performance with the new gas. It would run fine for a while, then start the hesitation routine again. I continued drive the car until it was about a quarter of a tank below full and refilled at another gas station. The problems lessened and again, I drove it until it was a quarter of a tank less than full and refilled again. The problems ceased.


The point here is that I certainly didn't get emotional about the bad gas (probably mixed with water) that I bought. I certainly didn't blame myself for it. I made a mental note to be more careful in choosing a gas station and I did what I could to solve the problem. Then, I moved on.


What would life be like if we were this rational and calm about decisions with food? If we didn't "awfulize" ourselves for a poor decision, but simply made corrections and moved forward?


After all, the car analogy is very meaningful when it comes to eating. Food is our fuel.


When we overeat at lunch, we're going to skip and sputter through the afternoon or yearn for a nap. When we ignore real hunger, we're going to eat too much the next time we come within 10 feet of food. And, when we are tired, overwhelmed or stressed, those high-carb snacks or that candy bar is going to give us a quick lift, then drop us into an energy-depleted place where further cravings are guaranteed.


The science of eating can be complicated. Over-emotionalizing choices and decisions can be stressful, if not downright traumatic.


Recognize and eliminate destructive and negative thinking when it comes to the all-important process of fueling the body. That is one of the most important steps in developing a healthy life and lifestyle.


Resource: patbarone.com

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