Nutritionist’s Tips For Indian Breakfasts

Indian food has long had a notorious reputation for being unhealthy. As any foreigner who has made a visit to India and he will tell you that the food is oily, consists of too many complex carbohydrates and is fattening. This is not a lie, but neither is it completely truthful. Yes, Indian food is miserably unhealthty, but not all Indian food. According to most nutritionists, the ones made in our house hold are in fact, proven to be a lot more healthy than most European and American cusines. However, the ones which are served in fast food restaurants and other diners are undoubtedly unhealthy. So which food types should we avoid and which should we eat?


Most nutritionists insist on having Indian breakfasts. Indian breakfast dishes are amongst the most healthiest in the cuisine. It is also interesting to note that Indian breakfasts contribute to almost no fat formation in the body and only contribute to calories that can be used by the body for the entire day. So what exactly are the foods that are good to eat?


White rice is certainly out of the question. Rice was part of the previous generation’s useful diet. Those in that generation consisted of hard working farmers who actually needed the energy given by white rice. If on the other hand, you don’t use the energy it gives, it accumulates inside your body as fat and refuses to leave. So, how do nutritionists recommend to solve this problem? It is simple. Eat brown rice instead. Brown rice takes away all the bad stuff that is contained in the white rice. It does not give in as much calories as white rice does and can thus, safetly be eaten in larger quantities.


Another great breakfast dish is the idli. The idli is in fact, steamed rice. But since it has considerably lesser number ofcalories and since it is primarily a breakfast dish, it can be safetly consumed. In fact, it is estimated that the right number of idlis in the morning can contribute to as close as one third of your energy requirement for the day..


So, go and check with your nutritionist today. Find out the better indian foods and concentrate on them instead of losing yourself in an abyss of fattening foods. It is better to follow a healthy diet now than to have problems such as diabetes later on. So, go and eat healthy.

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Dietician Tips For Parents To Keep Kids Healthy

If you are a parent to an obese teenager, then you probably have a lot to worry about. For one, you have to make peace with the fact that a lot of your child’s peers are making fun of your child for his or her obesity. You are also worried about the increasing amount of heart disease risk in teenagers in modern times. All these insecurities burden your head and you finally take it up with your adolescent kid who only fights back at you for being insensitive. Is there no way out?


Fortunately, there is. It is possible to help control the kind of food that your child eats by trying to find out when he or she is the most hungry. At this time, it is essential that there is some healthy food around the house or your child is going to eat junk food outside. Most teenagers are hungry after they come from school or college. In today’s urban world where both parents are working, it is hard for someone to be around when the child needs proper food. Even if you are not physically present, it is mandatory for you to provide some good and healthy food when your child returns home.


Furthermore, always try to make something that is both healthy and delicious. While this might prove to be a bit of a challenge, it is still not impossible. Try to improvise with simple recipes. Most dieticians say that the trick is to find a common ground here. It is acceptable for your child to include an extra cheese slice between his sandwich as long as he or she also stocks up on the vegetables. With this kind of arrangement, you will soon begin to see how much fun eating healthy can actually be.


Consult with your dietician today. It is important that your dietician keeps track of the quality and quantity of the food consumed by your child. If the eating is getting out of hand, he will recommend you to a psychiatrist as the problem might be on the attitude your child has on life. Perhaps he or she eats when nervous. After all, adolescence is a time when there are a lot of emotions lying on the surface. Never take any signs such as these on face value. They may have far reaching consequences than you might think.

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How To Loose Weight By Laughing

So do you believe that losing weight is no laughing matter? Well, you are wrong. Recent studies have shown that losing weight is indeed related to laughing. An American study done on about 45 individuals has shown that a 10 to 15 minutes set of strong laughter can induce a weight loss of about 2 kilos annually. This means that you can shed off weight by just laughing. So how to loose weight by just laughing?


It is first imperative to know that no amount of laughter can guarantee you what a weight loss program can. Laughter is not an exercise routine and is not built to burn calories in the traditional way. What this survey indicates is the attitude people should have towards weight loss. Weight loss is all about showing positive energy. And this positive energy is reflected on the body.


It is thus important to have a fitness routine and a diet plan to depend on. Laughter is a mechanism to help with the weight loss. While it can boost your system and send the heart rate up, the laughter dies down after a few minutes. It is therefore important to keep up the heart rate by compensating it with other aerobic exercises. Laughter is also a good way to keep your motivational levels high. This comes in handy when the exercise routine does not show results.


For this kind of weight loss scheme to succeed, it is mandatory for you to surround yourself with sources of positive influence. Keep company of those of your friends that can make you laugh. That way, you always have an aura of positive influence over you and that would give you the motivation that is needed to perform the work out. It is important to remember that even if laughter induces loss of weight, the effect is only short term. For long term results, it is necessary for you to put your faith on trusted fitness programmes.


So you still want to know how to loose weight by laughing? Well, first enrol in a fitness programme, attend the classes regularly and surround yourself with people who have a positive influence on you. That way, you will be motivated to attend the work outs even if you do not see immediate results. This is the only way that laughter and positive influence can have long term effects on your body.

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Dieting For Teens – Does It Work?

There is a reason as to why obesity is common amongst teenagers. When you are in your teens, your body is going through a very trying time. It is experiencing physical and hormonal changes. It is also growing at a rapid rate and so needs a lot of energy to fuel its internal processes. During such a time, it is highly essential that you follow up on what you eat and to limit the food intake to the required levels. This is where dieting comes into play.


As a teen, you are most likely to have several commitments to follow. It is possible for you and all your friends to go out and eat fast food junk on a whim. It is therefore important for you to be alert at all times. Generally speaking, the average calorie intake for a teenage boy is around 2500 to 3000 calories and the average intake for a teenage girl is around 1800 to 2100 calories. Anything over the prescribed limits tend to accumulate as unused energy which is transformed to fat that is stored inside the body. Another blow might come in the form of the fact that the weight accumulated over your teens is very hard to get rid of and has chances of staying on forever. It is thus, of utmost importance for you to focus on your weight loss during your teens as it might be the best time to get rid of the extra baggage.


Dieting for teens is fairly straightforward. It is important for your body to have sufficient calcium and iron as they help with the growth and strengthening of your bones. So, be sure to include plenty of these in your diet. Also, always try t eat at least one meal with your family. Research has shown that teenagers who do this are more likely to have healthier dieting habits than others who do not. Also make sure to never skip meals during the day. Especially the breakfast. The breakfast is probably the most important meal of the day as it vitalizes your efforts and is nearly always completely digested.


So if you are a teenager who is obese, it is high time that you start putting in some effort to get rid of some of that extra baggage. Do it soon and you will not regret the decision for the rest of your life.

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I Tried Switching To An Indian Diet- Not Only Is It Healthy, It’s Tasty!

When I read a blog advocating the health benefits that an Indian diet has, I was determined to switch over to it, as I desperately needed to control my diet for health reasons. An Indian diet comprises of a cooking style that is known world wide for its expertise in blending of spices and herbs to produce distinct and exotic culinary delights with exotic flavors. However, not only do the seasonings impart the distinctive flavor to the food, they also have a lot of health benefits, which makes Indian diet very healthy too.

Indian diet consists of a few dishes have a propensity to have higher fat and calories than necessary which decreases their desirability for people on a diet. Yet, with some adjustments, care taken while food preparation, the fat content can be decreased substantially, making it more weight friendly.

I used a nonstick pan to fry vegetables, and replaced ghee with low fat oils like olive oil to further reduce the fat content of the food. I also generally dry roasted spices instead of using ghee or oil to roast them. In addition, instead of using full fat dairy products, I started using low fat dairy products. Whenever an onion or potato dish required deep-frying, I cooked them by blanching them in water instead, which helped me avoid the extra fat generated by deep-frying.

While choosing rice, another modification that I made was to choose whole grain rice instead of white rice, as whole grain rice consists of more fiber, and a higher amount of nutrients than white rice. I also regulated salt intake carefully, by using yellow or red curry mixes instead of salt to give flavor to the food. Too much of salt is harmful for the body, as it causes heart problems. Excessive salt intake also promotes water retention in the body, which can cause bloating of the belly. The result was that I got dishes that were not only extremely healthy, but tasty too!

I also regularized my water intake while eating, as water helps in savoring the flavors of the food slowly and truly. It has been scientifically proven, that water consumption along with food is beneficial for weight loss. From my personal experience with Indian diet, comprising of rotis, rice, vegetables, curries, etc cooked in a low fat way helped me stay healthy lose weight.

I also incorporated tea in my diet between meals. Indian tea when prepared from scratch not only has a remarkable taste and fragrance but is also low in calories. Besides conventional variants of Indian tea also have a lot of health benefits.

Mrs. Geeta Paul, Chandigarh

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Four Things My Dietician Told Me That I Had No Clue About

There are several nutrition/dietician related facts that normal people like you and me do not tend to know. I had been trying to lose weight for quite some time and been frustrated by constant failure. I was shocked that there was so much more to a consultation with a dietician rather than just going on a diet based on common sense and everyday logic, and how much their personalized suggestions actually helped me to lose weight and be healthier. Some of the things that the dietician told me amazed me as I actually had no clue about them, and used to believe popular diet myths.

Assumption of facts generally leads to undesirable results:

The dietician told me many things about the concept of a healthy diet that I frankly had no idea about. He said that most people assume that their choices are better than they truly are. I used to think tat if a label said Seven-Grain Bread; it should be healthy. Then through my conversation with the dietician, I realized that unless the label also said whole grains it was not necessarily healthy.

Replacing fruit juices for whole fruits actually makes you put on more weight:

Is a fruit juice healthier than a soda? Yes, or so I believed until this myth was busted partially. Fruit juices are also concentrated with sugar and don’t have anywhere near the same amount of nutrients that you can get from whole fruits, What’s more, if you are trying desperately to lose weight, a glass of juice won’t give the same sense of fullness as a piece of fruit. “Instead, you’ll just take in a whole lot of calories and still feel hungry,”

Certain amounts of carbohydrates are essential to lose weight in a healthy way:

Much like the low carbohydrates diet craze, like everyone even I thought that if my meals were low on carbohydrates, it obviously would help me lose weight. I also believed that if the food has low carbohydrate content, I could eat huge amounts and still not gain weight. However, what the dietician told me about carbohydrates was a revelation. Carbohydrates are essential to maintain the healthy metabolism of the body. Without carbohydrates, you might lose weight, but you will lose in several other ways too. After that, I changed my philosophy towards the concept of a weight loss diet.

Eating less does not necessarily help lose weight, it can even increase it:

Underestimating the amount of food your body actually needs is one of the most common mistakes, and I like others was unaware of this. I used to eat minimal quantities during meals, but in between to satiate my hunger I used to sneak in a snack or two thinking it would not make a big difference since I was already eating very little. Then my dietician stated another fact that forced me to revise my diet patterns completely. Under eating meant my hunger was not satiated, which meant that I snacked on high fat foods in between to satisfy it. Even though the amount I ate was less, a healthy medium sized low fat meal would contribute much less calories than my meager but highly unbalanced meal.

Rajshree Harish

Bangalore

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Vegetarian Diet Plans

We spend hours every day browsing through the internet or reading various health magazines searching for valuable diet advice. But what majority of vegetarians do not understand is that vegetarian centric advice is normally not given in most websites and health magazines, as non vegetarian foods are viewed as great nutritional supplements. Vegetarian food is distinct, and quite a lot of people in the world consume purely vegetarian food.

Diet plans revolving around vegetarian food are very different from regular diet plans, they do not include the consumption of even egg! But that does not mean that vegetarian food is any less healthy than non vegan food! Losing weight with purely vegetarian diet plans is an easy job! Vegetarian foods have a lot of fiber in them that reduces unnecessary water retention in the body, and thus reduces the bloating of the physique. Also food with a higher fiber composition helps digest food better even when it is highly processed.

Vegetables such as carrots, beans, tomato, cucumbers, etc., have high amounts of fiber as well as essential nutrients such as manganese, potassium, proteins, vitamins, etc. Fruits should be an important part of your diet plans. Fruits are not only packed with nutritional benefits, but they’re also very low in calories, and gives you a complete as well as healthy diet.

A perfect way to maintain the steady metabolism of nutrients in your body is by having three proper medium sized or six small sized meals in a day and to make this a rule in accordance with your diet plans.

A good diet when combined with some exercise, preferably during early morning or evening, is a great way to go to lose weight. A light breakfast should be something healthy like cornflakes, low fat oats, fruit salads, one of these usually accompanied by a glass of fresh juice or a glass of milk.

Heavy meals should be avoided at any costs as these will do nothing but add extra calories to your body.

Avoid carb foods such as potatoes, junk food. A pizza once in a while is fine, but pizzas for lunch every day? Absolutely not!

Keep it green with well cooked vegetables in your diet plans and high fiber food productswhich are low in calories and also satisfy your hunger. Dinner can have small amounts of carbohydrate foods, as the body will have ample time to digest the food, as there would be a long gap between dinner and the subsequent breakfast.

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