Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Our 2010 Guide To Healthy Eating

It is certainly NOT easy to be young, or to put it appropriately, stay young. After all the facial creams you have tried, the potions you drank, and all the machines you have purchased, here’s the good news: Staying young is really all about eating healthy. There is really no doubt that going for healthy eating choices and developing healthy eating habits are two interrelated paths towards wellness. And here this: Studies show that eating healthy can do reverse and delay aging process. But how exactly can healthy food items help you achieve not only younger looking skin (that you have always dreamed of, by the way) and the body of a strong and healthy 30-year old? Given right foods, your body will release “youth hormones” that can manage the hormonal roller coaster and aging activities going on inside you, notes Dr. Vincent C. Giampapa of the Longevity Institute International. Healthy foods and eating habits do push your body towards your dream: Stronger immunity, sustained energy, and improved senses like vision and hearing.

Planning For Anti-Aging Diet

So how does an anti-aging diet look like? Gone are the days when you have to be satisfied with celery and carrot sticks as your sort-of dinner meal. But first things first: Determining the goal of anti-aging diet. In planning your very own (read: personalized) anti-aging diet, only remember this: Reversing the effect of time with your body. Remember, weight gain should remain secondary to restoring your body back to its efficiency.

Fight off free radicals. Our body is actually good at fending off free radicals – when we were young. But after all the eating, the wrong food options, and putting your exercise plan at the backseat (for, what, twenty years), our body becomes weak and unable to win its fight against free radicals.

Now is the time that your body needs all the help it can get: From the antioxidants present in our body down to the vitamin C and E supplements that you can buy in your fave healthcare store.

Go for youth hormones. As we age, our body becomes unable to produce three important hormones that can be credited for the vivacity of youth: Insulin growth factor (IGF-1), human growth hormone (hGH), and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHA). So what happens when your body starts to produce lower amount of all these so-called youth hormones? It becomes inefficient in delivering chemical messages from one point to another and it becomes unable to repair cells after being ravaged by free radicals. All these result to lower immunity, loss of muscle, and you essentially facing more illnesses now more than ever.

Seemed like you don’t stand a chance against aging? Dr. Giampapa doesn’t think so. The answer you’ve been looking for actually lies in the simple equation of simply increasing the body’s production of these youth hormones. How? With a simple anti-aging diet.

Measure Your Anti-aging Diet

So how do you plan your very own anti-aging diet? Start with this simple rule of thumb: The lower the glycemic index, the better for your body. Research shows that foods with low glycemic index encourage the production of IGF-1 and hGH. Fruits, vegetables, and whole grains essentially help to stabilize the body’s insulin level, which makes our body less inclined to produce cortisol or the so-called stress hormone.

Committing to healthy eating choices and forgetting about what we are used to eating, such as cornflakes and white rice, can help our body greater than what you actually think. Commit to dedicating yourself to healthy eating habits, and stick to it.

Heavyweight bread. Go for the high in fiber, heavier loaf bread you see in the market. Whole grain bread has essentially lower glycemic index than you low-cal wheat bread. But there are so many options, so what to choose? Here’s a good rule of thumb: The heavier, the better. The better news is that these breads are more filling than your lightweight ones, leaving you that feeling of satiety without piling your plate.

Go for the beans, and specifically dried beans. These items have unbelievably low glycemic index and are really good source of proteins. But aside from dried beans, experts also recommend chickpeas, black eyed peas, lima beans, and black beans because they are excellent source of fibers, containing at least 6g of the much needed fiber in a half-cup serving.

Love yam. One of the reasons we love sweet potatoes, aside from being so filling, is because it has lower glycemic index than the more popular white potato. But what if you love fries? We simply recommend cooking yam the way you do the white potato: Simply cut in thin strips, use your fave olive oil brand to coat them all, sprinkle it with a healthy dash of paprika, and slide it to the oven for 40-minute baking.


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To guide you in your journey, Miss Vanderbilt recommends


Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food--includes CDEating healthy doesn't end with making the right choices when it comes to what you eat. It involves, most importantly, understanding the role that food plays in our lives. In over 200 pages, Dr. Jan Chozen Bays dares women over 40 to re-examine their thoughts about foods and how it, in return, affects their eating habits. Through a series of guided meditations and exercises, Bays encourages women to just let go of what other people and even experts tell them about food and just listen to what their body really needs. Bays objective in this book, and a super helpful CD, is to help women achieve and re-gain their best health and life ever by changing what you see and think about food.  

Meal by Meal: 365 Daily Meditations for Finding Balance Through Mindful EatingLike The Daily Bread, Meal by Meal is a wonderful read that will introduce you to bite-size pieces of wisdom about food and how it affects your health and wellness. Written by Buddhist devotee Donald Altman, Meal by Meal is essentially a compilation of intimate stories of rituals and practices of people around the world, from the Native Americans to the Christians, and, thereby, only showing how food unites each one of us in spirit. In spite of his experience, Altman lovingly writes bits and pieces of advices that you can always reflect on whenever you feel like it. Whatever relationship you have with food, Meal by Meal is written to guide and help you renew and rediscover what food is and how it can help you find fulfillment in your everyday life.  


Eating the Moment: 141 Mindful Practices to Overcome Overeating One Meal at a TimeWe, at Miss Vanderbilt, consider Eating the Moment as one of the most must-haves for women over 40 who want to take control of their eating habits, desires, and, most importanly, their lives. Full of challenging yet fun exercises, Eating the Moment is really a thought provoking text that dares women over 40 to reflect on their eating habits so they can better manage their appetites. In each lesson, Dr. Pavel G. Somov takes you to a journey of knowing your taste palates, your desire, needs, and, most importantly, your self.


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