The UnDiet Weight Loss Guide » September 2012

Monthly Archives: September 2012

Paleo

One Reason Why the Paleo Diet Is a Sure Fire Diet for Most Americans

Published by:

Usually people who are in the market for an effective diet plan aren’t just trying to lose one or two pounds. They are looking for something that could help them make a significant change in their body composition. The Paleo Diet is centered around eating in a way that, for most Americans, would mean a significant alteration to their daily menu.

What is the Paleo Diet?

The Paleo Diet is a way of eating that encourages people to get back to their roots as hunters and gatherers, eating the natural foods our ancestors hunted, fished, and gathered since the beginning of time. In our day this would mean fish, wild game meats, grass-fed beef as well as vegetables, seasonal fruits, and healthy fats such as nuts, seeds, avocado, and olive and coconut oil. The diet completely EXCLUDES all grains, dairy, beans, refined sugars, processed foods, and alcohol. The claim is that our modern diet wreaks havoc on our bodies contributing to several “diseases of civilization” such as obesity, type II diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and many autoimmune diseases, as we have not had sufficient time to make the genetic adaptations necessary to handle an agricultural diet.

Why the Paleo Diet Will Work

We as Americans love and basically live on every food that the Paleo diet encourages followers to totally EXCLUDE from their diet. They are our quick foods, comfort foods, party foods, snack foods, basically every-occasion foods. The only bad thing is they are also the foods that have gotten us into trouble with our body weight too. Many of them are packed with calories and fat to enhance flavor and improve shelf life. By completely excluding all of these refined sugars and processed foods from our diet, and revising our diet to include fruits, vegetables, nuts, and lean cuts of meat, it is nearly impossible not to see results. Agreed? Read this article for more information on the Paleo Diet.

How Paleo Makes it Easy

Paleo followers have made the diet super easy to follow as well. There are numerous books and websites that lay everything out for you including meal ideas and even a shopping list of Paleo approved foods. Check out knowmybody.com for tons of information about how eating Paleo will do more than just help you lose weight.

 

 

Healthy Products

How to Make Naturally Sweet Sugar-Free Lemonade

Published by:

Lemonade is a favorite warm-weather drink all over the world. Traditionally made by pouring freshly squeezed lemon juice, water, and sugar, over ice, lemonade adds a lot of empty calories to the diet, so most dieters prefer to use low- or no-calorie sweeteners. But what can you do if you want the sweet-tart taste of lemonade without the sugar and also without Sweet ‘n Low, Nutrasweet, or acesulfam?

The obvious choice for a naturally sweet sugar-free lemonade is stevia. Liquid stevia extract is 100 percent natural, and it’s blissfully simple to use to make lemonade. Add a few drops, stir, and you’re done. There are, unfortunately, a couple of drawbacks to using liquid stevia extract to make lemonade.

One problem with liquid stevia is its licorice-like aftertaste. If you happen to like licorice, using stevia extract to make your sugar-free lemonade may be fine. But that leads to the other problem with liquid stevia.

Stevia is hundreds of times sweeter than sugar. It is very easy to use too much. Too much stevia, surprisingly, carries a bitter taste that can be very hard to get out of your mouth. However, there is an almost sugar-free alternative,.

Powdered stevia sweeteners contain tiny amounts of stevia rebaudiosides, the plant chemicals that make stevia taste sweet. The powder in a stevia packet is actually 99.8 percent filler and only 0.2 percent stevia. The filler is usually some other sugar that is chosen to complement the sweetness of the rebaudiosides. Manufacturers in the US and Canada often use glucose, which is sensed on the tongue just a fraction of a second before the sweetness of the stevia rebaudiosides kicks in. Manufacturers in Australia and Asia use xylitol, a lower-calorie sugar that is manufactured from corn cobs. Powdered stevia products are not really completely natural, and they are not really completely calorie-free, but it only takes about 15 calories in sugar “filler” to carry the stevia rebaudiosides that will sweeten an entire pitcher of lemonade.

What if you simply don’t want any kind of added sugar at all in your naturally sweet sugar-free lemonade? Then the solution is to make your lemonade with “sweet lemons,” a relatively hard-to-find fruit born by the lemon species Citrus limetta. Once you find and buy the fruit, or after you pick your lemons from your own Citrus limetta tree, you will have to do your own squeezing to make a slightly greenish juice. The juice of the sweet lemon, however, is sweet enough to drink without sugar, artificial sweeteners, or stevia, and also high in antioxidant flavonoids and vitamin C.