Are your holiday eating habits already out of control? Can you feel the pounds climbing on as your energy levels fizzle? Are you feeling overwhelmed, and it’s getting harder to cope with everyday challenges? It’s not too late to turn things around for the season. December doesn’t need to be miserable.
Saying that olive oil can help you to lose weight can seem counter intuitive. After all, it’s packed with calories. In fact, it contains more calories than butter! Still, it is also packed with some extremely healthy properties that produce some benefits you may never have expected from a fat.
Olive oil is a staple in the Mediterranean where it is used in a wide spectrum of both cooked and raw foods. Studies have shown that olive oil also offers a number of supportive benefits to help you lose weight. Of course, drinking olive oil (or one of the greatly-hyped lemon juice and olive oil shots) is not going to produce a measurable difference in your weight – except perhaps by bringing it up by dosing you with too many calories. However, it can help you lose weight when used strategically.
One of the most common questions about an animal-based diet have to do with sources of vegan protein. After all, the majority of people who follow a traditional American diet get most of their protein from animal sources. This can include meat, eggs, dairy, and others.
As a result, unless you are choosing to follow a plant-based diet, you’ve likely never needed to consider sources of vegan protein. It can seem like a mysterious and complex topic, but when you get to know a few excellent sources right from the start, you’ll find that it’s much easier to go meatless.
Is there such a thing as a metabolism boosting bedtime snack? The holiday season makes this type of question more important than virtually any other time. After all, it’s at this time of year that we’re most likely to suffer from unwanted weight gain. With treats everywhere and bulky sweaters to cover the damage, it’s difficult to come up with a reason not to indulge.
That said, even on days when you’ve been good about what you’ve eaten, it doesn’t mean that you’ll automatically be immune to hunger at bedtime. Research says that it’s typically better to have a little something before than it is to go to bed feeling hungry. That said, not all snacks are created equal. Make sure you select a metabolism boosting bedtime snack that will work with you, not against you.
Is there a healthier kind of sugar out there than the one we usually use – white refined sugar? Not really. That said, some types of sweetener do have advantages over others. The key is to understand what you want from the sweetener you’re choosing.
The quest for a healthier kind of sugar typically leads people nowhere. Companies have started adding “cane sugar” to their labels to try to make it sound better, but it’s the same product they’ve always used, only with a more natural sounding name. Do honey, maple syrup or even stevia provide a better option? Slightly when it comes to certain specific benefits, but not when it comes to the insulin response or calorie intake.