How to search for hidden calories

Have you ever weighed yourself after weeks of dieting only to wonder why you haven't lost more weight? You stuck to the food on the list you gave yourself (or were given) and yet the scales are firmly stuck higher than you expected. It can be so disappointing and frustrating.

There can be many reasons that you don't loose weight as fast as you would like and one of those reasons can be hidden calories.

For example you may decide to get a take-away lunch at a well known chain that offers long bread rolls filled with meat, cheese and salad. They even display the low calorie options to help you choose your lunch. You choose chicken, avoid the cheese, have lots of salad and believe that you are doing really well. And then you choose a low fat dressing but what you may not be aware of is the amount of sugar in that dressing. In this case it is the dressing that has the hidden calories.

Nearly all sauces and dressings have sugar in them. Next time you want a sauce or dressing from a bottle have a look at the label first. The way to avoid the hidden calories is to use mustard (but not American mustard) or to make your own dressings using olive oil and lemon juice or natural yoghurt (not low fat) and lime (or lemon) zest and juice. You can also add spices, herbs and vinegars except Balsamic which has a very high sugar content.

One of the other big contenders in the hidden calorie category is the nibble. It is quite astonishing just how many extra calories you can consume by nibbling. Do you nibble when you cook or if there is food out? How about that little snack on the way home from a long day at work or when you are doing the food shop? You often forget about them because you didn't consume the food as part of a meal or on a plate. You can consume over a third of your required calories through nibbling. Some people chew gum to prevent them nibbling. Others carry a bottle of water everywhere and sip on that. Try adding some mint leaves and cucumber slices, or a slice of lemon or lime to your water.

Enjoy becoming a detective of hidden calories and celebrate the change it brings to your weight management.

love
Sarah

Craving or addiction?

Have you ever wanted chocolate so badly that nothing else would do? Join the club. I suspect that you and I are not alone and that there are many women who have had the same experience, and have had this experience more than once.

Certain events seem to trigger this desire for chocolate including sudden stress, sudden hunger and 'that time of the month'. And then there are the days that there is no apparent or obvious reason. We just want chocolate.

I have been told by clients that they are addicted to chocolate and that whatever plan we create for them to follow must include some chocolate. Some of my clients are quite concerned that they could be addicted to chocolate.

How do you tell the difference between a craving and an addiction? Here are a few differences so that you can work out which one is you for difference foods and drinks. For example you may have cravings for cheese and be addicted to coffee. I recently met someone who has 7 - 8 cups a day.

• A craving causes you to be very focused on that one food and there is no substitute for that food. There are no signs and symptoms such as shaking, nausea or headaches, just a real desire to eat that food.
• When you eat that food it feels great and you feel very satisfied.
• An addiction means that you need that food and without it you experience a range of signs and symptoms. An example of this could be suddenly giving up coffee when you usually consume 8 cups a day. You will get headaches and other signs and symptoms.
• With an addiction the consumption of that food or drink item doesn't make you feel great, rather it makes you feel normal and cures the withdrawal symptoms that you were experiencing.
• With an addiction you require an increasing amount of that food or drink to feel normal. It is the same with drugs such as Morphine or Valium.

Now that you understand the difference you can work out if you have a craving or an addiction to chocolate. The answer is nearly always a craving and not an addiction.

love
Sarah

Can alcohol help you sleep?

Alcohol has been used for centuries both for recreation and for medicinal purposes. I have a 1946 nursing dictionary that has a whole entry on the use of Brandy. It recommends Brandy for all ages for gastric ailments, shock and general malaise. It has the amounts to administer including the number of drops for new-born babies. And it that isn't enough to make your eyebrows rise up, it goes on to state that in cases of sudden collapse the Brandy should be administered by injection into the vein. Talk about a 'shot in the arm'.

Have you ever experienced a heavy lunch and several glasses of wine helping you snooze for an hour after lunch or at bedtime? Alcohol can make us sleepy and it can also make some people very active. It also diminishes inhibitions and insight, allowing people to think that they can dance like John Travolta and sing like Frank Sinatra. Karaoke bars are a shining example of this.

So how can it be that alcohol can make you sleepy and even help you get to sleep and yet can also prevent you from getting good sleep by waking you up several hours later?

When we sleep we go through several cycles of REM sleep and non-REM sleep. These cycles are very important and we need a minimum of 4 - 5 cycles every night for a restorative and restful night. When we are disturbed by noises such as a party next door, or due to illness or anxiety we miss out on several cycles and feel tired and fractious in the morning.

The consumption of alcohol increases the amount of non-REM sleep and reduces the number of full cycles. More than this it can also lead to nightmares or vivid dreams, sweating and multiple awakenings during the night. These negative effects can also be felt when alcohol is consumed in the late afternoon.

Alcohol may be able to help you get to sleep but it will then give you an interrupted and poor quality of sleep.

sweet dreams
Sarah

Sugar for stress

Have you ever noticed that when you are feeling stressed you want some chocolate or something sweet? Did you ever wonder why this happens or just take it for granted because it has always been like this?

Why do we reach for something sugary in times of stress? There are good biological and chemical reasons for it but because we are stressed so often in our modern society we end up reaching for something sweet nearly every day.

All our cells need glucose. Sweet foods contain one or more types of sugar and our body will convert these into the glucose for us. Except for fructose, which I have mentioned before. It converts fructose into fatty acids and this is then sent off to float in our blood vessels and eventually be stored as fat. More about fructose another day.

In the days of wooly mammoths and sabre tooth tigers the need for sugar to provide instant energy made sense. It gave the cave woman some time to find other food supplies such as berries and nuts, and the cave men time to hunt for meat and possibly fish.

When our brain is tired it will ask your body for more glucose and this is why we reach for sweet foods when we are tired. We also sometimes fancy sweet foods when we are ill, because our bodies are using our resources to help to heal us. When I worked as a nurse in the emergency department we often made shocked relatives cups of hot sweet tea. The heat helped to keep the circulation going, tea is both a stimulant and a relaxant and the sugar provided a hit of instant energy because shock causes the digestive system to shut down so that the body can provide all its resources to the vital organs and the muscles.

As children most of us were rewarded with a sweet treat for being 'brave' during something unpleasant which could range from an injection to having a broken limp fixed. Sweet drinks were on hand for flu, any amount of infections brought home from school and lollies and chocolates helped when your best friend turned nasty and went off with another girl from school. Add in hormones as we mature and pretty soon chocolate is becoming something that we can always rely on to get us through a tough moment or entire bad year.

The combination of being physically engineered to seek out sweet food, a brain that demands glucose when tired and a body that demands glucose under stress with a life time of being given sweet food as a treat or to make us feel better all leads to us turning to chocolates and lollies every time we feel tired, upset or stressed. And this doesn't include the times we use them to celebrate occasions and success.

Once you understand all the chemistry and natural desires of our body and brain plus conditioning it becomes easier to notice it when it happens and seek out alternatives.

Next time you are stressed you could try this 10 second stress reliever:
Place your hands together palm to palm and then curl your fingers over each other.
Breath in deeply and then quickly breath out deeply.
Do this 10 times.
Each time you do this raise one finger until you have raised all 10 fingers (and thumbs).

This uses up the adrenaline that we pump out when we become stressed so that don't feel so agitated and jumpy, which in turn reduces our need for sugar.

love
Sarah