Revised Nutrition Guidelines

The National Health and Medical Research Council last week released new nutritional guidelines for Australian adults, adolescents and children. The new guidelines were released to highlight new research into appropriate dietary choices and to promote good nutrition and health. This comes at a time where obesity and type-2 diabetes are at an all-time high in Australia, with numbers set to rise further.

The guidelines recommend regular consumption of fruits and vegetables. Though this is nothing new, recent studies have shown a variety of vegetable types and colours can reduce the risk of some cancers. Similarly, consumption of a wide range of fruits has been shown to decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Perhaps more obviously, the guidelines suggest strong evidence exists that sugar-sweetened drinks are associated with weight (fat) gain.

There is also new evidence suggesting eating whole grain products can decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease, excessive weight gain and type-2 diabetes. Milk and other dairy products have also been shown to decrease the risk of heart disease in some cases.

Committee chairwoman Doctor Amanda Lee summarises -
"We need to eat double the amount of vegetables and fruits, double the amount of wholegrain cereals, much more milk, yoghurt and low-fat cheese, and increasing our lean poultry and fish,"

Detailed guidelines can be found at http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/_files_nhmrc/publications/attachments/n31.pdf

A simplified poster can be found at http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/_files_nhmrc/publications/attachments/n32.pdf

Maintaining your weight over xmas

At Christmas time often our healthy diets and lifestyles are pushed aside in favour of calorie dense foods, alcohol and limited exercise. If you’ve been focusing on losing weight for months, it would be a shame to throw it all away and ruin your hard work in a short space of time. Think how good you would feel after Christmas if you maintained your current weight and level of fitness.

It is important to adapt an ongoing mindset of eating well out of respect for your body and not punishing yourself.

Here are a few tips to help maintain your weight and healthy eating mindset over Christmas:

1. Eat until you feel full but not sickly stuffed.
   
2. The first 3 mouthfuls always taste the best, after that the taste doesn't improve so try having just 3 bites of that Christmas cake and putting the rest away for another day
3. Exercise in the morning, before the Christmas party. Exercising first thing in the morning will ensure you don't get distracted by events during the day and miss your workout.
4. Exercise on Christmas day! Wake up early and go for a walk or run around the block before the festivities begin.
5. Include fruit or salad with every main meal to reduce the calorie content. This season offers a huge variety of yummy fruit and vegetables such as mangoes, cherries, apricots, plums, asian greens, capsicum, cucumbers, mushrooms, peas, tomatoes and many more.
   
6. Serve yourself up a piece of meat no bigger than the size of your palm then fill your plate with salad. Christmas lunch is often a buffet full of various types of meat but sticking to salad and no more meat than what would easily fit in the palm of your hand will make a huge difference to the calorie content of the meal.
7. Eat dinner before going to that party. When at a function, the canapes are often full of calorie dense foods. Eating a small meal before you go will minimise hunger meaning you won't feel like you need to go back to that platter.
8. Don't eat unless you are sitting down with food on a plate. Nibbling can add huge amounts of calories to your daily intake without you even realizing. By all means eat left overs, but put them on a plate and enjoy them as a set meal. Sit down and savour each mouthful.
9. Lastly, just because its Christmas day doesn't mean you have to try everything on the table. Remember there will be left overs so you can always try what you missed on boxing day.

This time of year should be a celebration time, so make sure you enjoy yourself. By following a few simple rules you can minimise the calories you consume but not have to miss out completely.

Does dieting make you fat?

The overweight and obesity epidemic is a worldwide problem. Obesity rates in Australia have more than doubled over the past 20 years. According to Fitness Australia over 7 million adults are jeopardizing their health by excessive weight. As a result children are following their parents examples and it is estimated that over one in 5 children are obese. The rates of overweight and obesity are rapidly increasing and it is estimated that, at the current rate of increase, about 75 per cent of the Australian population will be overweight or obese by 2020.

It seems like a contradiction: Diet and you'll get fatter. The problem is not with the dieting itself, but how you approach it. When it comes to dieting, most people fail. In fact, up to 95 percent of people who go on a diet regain all the weight they lost. Our bodies are programmed to understand hunger signals and not to diet. When you deprive your body of food, it will get the message that there's a risk of starvation. As a result, your hunger will increase and your metabolism will slow down to compensate for it. Once you get off the diet, your mind will go into overdrive and make you want to eat more to make up for the deprivation you just suffered. This is your body's way of preparing for possible famine. As a result, you might end up eating more than you did before the diet, to soothe both your emotions and your body. Also, by trying to lose large amounts of weight quickly, you throw your body into disarray. This might cause weight loss but it's likely to be a temporary solution. This means that once you go back to your regular eating habits, you're more likely to regain this weight back. More than 60 percent of dieters regain all the weight lost within a year of giving up their diets. Within five years, almost all dieters are back to their original weight.

Instead of focusing on instant gratification, the key to permanent weight loss is to think long-term. For example, choosing to eat whole grains instead of highly processed carbohydrates (fast food) is a healthy choice that will pay off over time: you'll be healthier, gain energy and lose weight. The key to successful weight loss is making changes in your eating and physical activity habits that you can keep up for the rest of your life

Soft drinks - Work of the Devil.

Soft drinks, and cordials are the work of the devil.
They supply your body with empty kilojoules. i.e. They provide your body with lots of energy, but don't give you the important nutrients that your body needs.This extra energy will eventually be stored as fat, if it is not used up in your daily energy requirements. Soft drinks are also high in G.I., meaning your blood sugar levels, and insulin levels are elevated significantly after drinking. Regular consumption of high GI foods can lead to type II diabetes.

Latest research out of Yale University has shown that the consumption of soft drink also results in a reduction in the intake of both dietary fibre, protein, fruit and macronutrients intake. Sugar drinks also stimulate one’s appetite for non-nutritional foods with higher glycaemic indexes eg hamburgers and pizza. Cola drinks contain a caramel colouring that may increase insulin resistance and the inflammation of the capillaries.

Soft drinks are the work of the devil!