|
Does this sound familiar? You sincerely try to follow a diet plan, but you are constantly hungry? The type and amount of food is just not enough to keep you satisfied and your mind off of food? The plans you've tried require exercises that you just aren't coordinated or in shape enough to do despite your best efforts? Other plans never let you eat any of your favorite foods ever and leave you feeling deprived? You don't know how to stay motivated or deal with the psychological issues of dieting and the plans you tried before didn't help you with that? It's so frustrating, isn't it? You are trying so hard and yet not having any success. You want to succeed, you're putting forth the effort, but just don't have the right tools to do it. Why are Japanese women slender and youthful? The secret is the Japanese diet. High in healthy foods like fish, vegetables, and rice, it is lower than the American diet in processed and refined foods. Japanese eat fresher foods and smaller portions as compared to typical Americans. The Japanese diet is lower in saturated fats because Japanese eat far less red meat and dairy products like cheese. By remaking your kitchen into a Tokyo kitchen, you can transform your eating habits and reap the health benefits. Some important principles about this eating lifestyle are: eat until you are 80% full, serve small portions on eye-pleasing serving dishes, walk whenever you can, and eat foods slowly to savor the flavor.This low in saturated fat diet focuses on whole foods and traditional Japanese staples, such as rice, fish, soy, fruits, and vegetables. Choose different cooking styles and a diverse selection of traditional Japanese condiments to increase the variety in your foods. This is not a diet in the strictest sense, but rather a lesson in how to eat healthier at home. The diet concentrates on eating healthy foods more frequently and eating foods like bread, rolls, cookies, and cakes less often. The seven pillars of Japanese home cooking are as follows: Fish - it is high in healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Japanese eat fish with lunch, dinner and even breakfast. Vegetables - the Japanese eat a large variety of the freshest vegetables. These include daikon, nori, and other sea vegetables, as well as vegetables more familiar to Americans (such as onions and eggplants). Rice - Japanese women eat a bowl of plain white rice at almost every meal. Choosing brown rice is even healthier. The Samurai diet consisted mainly of brown rice. Soy - have this in moderation. It is commonly eaten in the form of tofu or edamame. Noodles - many dishes are served over soba (buckwheat and wheat-flour noodles) or udon noodles (white noodles made of wheat-flour). Tea - many Japanese women drink green tea with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and also as an after-dinner refreshment. Fruit - Persimmons, tangerines, and Fuji apples are among the variety of fruit eaten in Japan. They are often served as dessert. This diet plan focuses on eating whole foods rather than taking supplements. |
|
On any given day about half of all American women (and girls) are on a diet. We spend over $40 billion on diets and weight loss products. But 65% of us are still significantly overweight, and the failure rate of the fad diets and the diet chains (Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig included) is over 97%. Clearly there are powerful factors that push us toward weight gain and all its related health problems. But the equally important question is, why even with dieting can’t women lose weight? Natural weight loss with a vegetarian diet or raw food diet is healthy weight loss. Natural appetite suppressants like hoodia weight loss or green tea weight loss are the best weight loss supplements. There are no weight loss vitamins, only natural appetite suppressants. People who have shifted to a raw vegan (plant based) diet have experienced natural weight loss, improved health, increased energy, and a variety of other benefits. Many have experienced weight "just slipping off!" It seems that when we return to a diet natural for our bodies, they work more efficiently, and health returns to us. It is common for "raw foodists" to eat all they want, as long as it is raw, and still enjoy weight loss. Friends of mine have lost as much as 100 pounds, with more possible, depending on the starting weight. While this diet has not been well studied, common sense tells us that before we learned to cook with fire, we were eating raw foods. Over the centuries we continued eating much raw food. In the last century, in our most recent generations, we have been eating more and more cooked, preserved, and processed foods, including canned and other packaged foods. Cooking foods is known to destroy enzymes, as well as destroy or reduce many other nutrients. It should be no surprise that diseases have been on the rise, and obesity is an epidemic. Here is the requested recipe. It can be changed around according to your taste. More about Healthy Thursdays at the bottom. Ingrediants: 16 oz. noodles (elbows, ziti, shells, whatever you like. whole wheat or regular) 4 slices of bread white or wheat (pulse in a food processor to make crumbs) 6 tbls. unsalted butter (or light butter, reserve 2 tbls.) 3 cups skim milk one block mozzarella cheese (about 10oz, part skim) 1/2 cup shredded cheddar (this is optional) 1tsp worcestershire sauce 1/4 cup flour salt and pepper Directions: Preheat oven to 400 degrees and spray a 9 x 13 baking dish Boil pasta according to package instructions White your pasta is cooking, melt 4 tbls. butter in a saucepan. Wisk in milk, flour, worcestershire sauce, and season generously with salt and pepper. Let boil for about a minute or two, reduce heat and mix in cheese until melted. When noodles are done, drain them and place in a large mixing bowl. Pour sauce over noodles and stir well. Put contents in your pan and sprinkle with bread crumbs and remaining butter (melted). Bake for about 45 minutes. The result: This is very good. Of course, it's hard to go wrong with noodles and cheese. Its not the healthiest food on earth, but I tried to make it better and I really stuck with small portions of it. I ate a one cup serving. 8 servings per pan at about 400 calories a serving. Light changes: use light butter, skip the bread topping, reduce amount of butter, cup milk to 2 cups, try 1/8 cup white flour and 1/8 cup whole wheat flour, use part skim and reduced fat cheeses, and try using whole wheat pasta! Also, this could be made into a meal by adding a protein and vegetable into the mixture. |