When I think of all the effort I have put over the years..........

..............just to lose a few pounds!!

And now it is so easy. Now I really envy the younger generation. They will never have to worry about going on starvation diets again.

I was very sceptical about taking the Hoodia Pills and really didn´t think they would work. After all, I have been round the diet block a lot of times in my life!! You lose - you gain. It was a never ending battle. But now I just take a couple of pills a day and drink plenty of water and the weight is coming off with no effort.

If you are thinking of trying Hoodia and are not sure if it will work......don´t wait any longer! Try it today - you will NOT be disappointed.

I still allow myself treats. I can keep some chocolate in the fridge for those "special occasions" when the urge is too strong to resist. But I don´t find myself standing in the kitchen wondering if there is "something nice" to have with my coffee. I am just not hungry enough to think about it.

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Correspondent | Sampling the Kalahari cactus diet

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Correspondent | Sampling the Kalahari cactus diet: " Correspondent Friday, 30 May, 2003, 09:56 GMT 10:56 UK
Sampling the Kalahari cactus diet
Kalahari bushmen
The San bushmen have eaten the plant for years
Correspondent's Tom Mangold travelled to Africa and sampled the appetite suppressing Hoodia, a plant which may make Kalahari bushmen millionaires.


By Tom Mangold
BBC Two's Correspondent
Imagine this: an organic pill that kills the appetite and attacks obesity.

It has no known side-effects, and contains a molecule that fools your brain into believing you are full.

Deep inside the African Kalahari desert, grows an ugly cactus called the Hoodia. It thrives in extremely high temperatures, and takes years to mature.

The San Bushmen of the Kalahari, one of the world's oldest and most primitive tribes, had been eating the Hoodia for thousands of years, to stave off hunger during long hunting trips.

When South African scientists were routinely testing it, they discovered the plant contained a previously unknown molecule, which has since been christened P 57.

The license was sold to a Cambridgeshire bio-pharmaceutical company, Phytopharm, who in turn sold the development and marketing rights to the giant Pfizer Corporation.

Fortune cactus

Cactus
A molecule in the cactus makes you feel full

"

I´m glad I´m not a chocaholic anymore!

I´m really glad I´m no longer a chocaholic anymore. I would have been worried about that salmonella thing! Since I came to live in Spain I have gone off chocolate big time. It just doesn´t taste the same here - I don´t know why, I just know it´s true......lol

And it´s very hard to eat chocolate when it´s hot. No matter how long you leave it in the freezer (yum yum) it still melts into a sticky mess before you finish the bar. You´d need to get into the fridge to eat it to stop it from melting.

Oh my aching head!!

It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was the yearly "Noche San Juan" celebration last night. The traditional way to celebrate Noche San Juan is to go to the beach, have a barbeque and a few drinks and stay on the beach all night. At midnight you are supposed to walk backwards into the sea and let 3 waves wash over you to wash away bad luck, then you turn around and let 5 waves wash over you to bring good luck, then you fall into the water and have a bit of a swim.

Well, as we live inland we decided to walk backwards into the pool instead........that was the plan. So we chilled a couple of bottles of wine and prepared a bonfire (Norwegian Tradition is to light a bonfire on this night). Our neighbour was a bit worried about the fire bit.......hasn´t been much rain here lately and one spark could do a lot of damage!!

Anyway, it ended up we had some wine, got a bit merry, frolicked in the pool a bit then decided to skip the bbq and go to the Chinese/Japanese/Thai restaurant instead. So I rang a taxi and in my very best Spanish accent gave directions to the house. He said he would be 20 minutes. So we waited and waited......and waited some more. Taxi never came so we decided to walk up the road hoping to meet him on the way down. We never did! And by the time we made it up to the restaurant the kitchen was closed.

Oh well, we said ;) We´ll just have to walk on up to town and find a bar. But this has been a very stressful week for me and I was beginning to feel the effects of it all - I just wanted to put my head down somewhere and go to sleep. We couldn´t get a taxi to get back home again!! So I decided I was going to lie down and go to sleep......my poor hubby has a lot to put up with, bless him!

We eventually got a barman to gat a taxi for us and got home. And I am paying big time today for having too much wine and no food. We definitely should have stuck to our original plan and stayed home for the night!

Technorati Tags:
diet
lose weight
hoodia
health and wellness
food
diary

I´m cheating today.....though not with food!

It´s a lovely day here today so I am spending as much time as possible outside and in the pool. So here is my lecture for the day......hahahaha.

The causes of obesity

Obesity is caused by unhealthy eating combined with sustained lack of activity. If food gives you more calories than you burn, your body turns on the storage program and puts on fat. This is the basic idea behind obesity.

Disorderly eating habits are the top reason why people becaome obese. With neither the time, nor the inclination to control one’s meals, it’s no wonder people get fat all over the world. Couple that with a sedentary lifestyle where most trips are taken by car and you got a health situation out of control.

Genetics: Obesity can also be inherited from family members who suffered from it. If your family has a history of obesity, then you would do well to watch your weight.

Junk food: We are all busy, but this does not mean that we have to eat everything fast food restaurants put before you. Burgers may look good, but they are fat too highly powered got your health. Thing is, a single burger is worth a whole meal, but your body does not judge the situation this way. Your stomach will never be filled by a regular burger, so it will keep asking for more, despite the fact that your body does not need more burgers.

Do you feel like giving up?
Many people try diets and manage to lose a few pounds. But returning to the old lifestyle and eating habits almost always means that weight lost turns into weight regained. Moreover, as diet follows diet, the body gets used to these “lean times” and makes it harder for you to lose weight.

To all this you may add that following a diet for a longer period of time is hard, because you will always crave the forbidden foods. The fact that certain delicious foods are forbidden makes them that much more attractive. A successful diet means adjusting your lifestyle to your needs, especially by making time for more exercising.


Technorati Tags:
diet
lose weight
hoodia
health and wellness
food
diary

Visiting Friends

What do you do when you are visiting a friends house and they make food that you wouldn´t normally eat??

We have friends that we visit every couple of weeks and spend a few hours at their house, and Maria usually spends most of that time in the kitchen making us something to eat. So it would seem rude to refuse! But I sit there listening to the food being FRIED ( and smell the greasy smell) and just know I will have to eat some of it at least.........ugh! And they never have any diet drinks so I usually ask for water. But she knows I like lemon sodas so she buys them especially for me and I try to make one can last me for the day - just imagining all those calories heading straight for my hips!!

Oh well, can´t help it.....we have to be sociable.

But on the plus side of life...there is a new Thai/Japanese Restaurant just opened in our town. The menu is great - full of my favourites, and it is a good healthy way to have a meal out without worrying about calories.................until we hit the Wine List.....but that´s another story...lol.




Technorati Tags:
diet
lose weight
hoodia
health and wellness
food
diary

Cool Weather = More Food...............

Hot Weather = Less Food.

And unfortunately today we are having a cloudy day, I´m not in the best of humours and I want to comfort eat! I´m not hungry at all I just want to have "comfort food". So I´m going to shake myself, get up from this computer and get outside for a bit.

It´s just as well the Hoodia Pills take away the hunger because I know for a fact that if I wasn´t taking them I would be in the kitchen now making a cup of coffee and searching for my "emergency biscuits"..............lol.

So I don´t have much more to talk about right now.........life is boring sometimes, especially when we´re only a few weeks away from the big event (son´s wedding) and have to save like mad to make sure we have a great holiday.

Talk tomorrow.........

My favourite Diet Joke

I spent ages searching for this joke today! I though I had it saved on my laptop, but obviously it was one of the things I lost along the way. So here it is and I hope you enjoy it.


Dave Barry
Atkins diet slays evil carbohydrates

Posted 03-31-2004 at 5:43PM

I probably shouldn’t admit this to you younger readers, but when my generation was your age, we did some pretty stupid things. I’m talking about taking crazy risks. We drank water right from the tap. We used aspirin bottles that you could actually open with your bare hands. We bought appliances that were not festooned with helpful safety warnings such as, “Do not bathe with this toaster.”

But for sheer insanity, the wildest thing we did was—prepare to be shocked—we deliberately ingested carbohydrates.

I know, I know. It was wrong. But we were young and foolish, and there was a lot of peer pressure. You’d be at a party, and there would be a lava lamp blooping away, and a Jimi Hendrix record playing—a “record” was a primitive compact disc that operated by static electricity. And then, when the mood was right, somebody would say: “You wanna do some ‘drates?” And the next thing you know, there’d be a bowl of pretzels going around, or crackers, or even potato chips, and we’d put these things into our mouths and just ... eat them.

I’m not proud of this. My only excuse was that we were ignorant. It’s not like now, when everybody knows how bad carbohydrates are, and virtually every product is advertised as being “low-carb,” including beer, denture adhesives, floor wax, tires, life insurance, and Viagra. Back then, we had no idea. Nobody did! Our own mothers gave us bread!

Today, of course, nobody eats bread. People are terrified of all carbohydrates, as evidenced by the recent mass robbery at a midtown Manhattan restaurant, where 87 patrons turned their wallets over to a man armed only with a strand of No. 8 spaghetti—“Do what he says! He has pasta! The city of Beverly Hills has been evacuated twice this month because of reports—false, thank heavens—that terrorists had put a bagel in the water supply.

But as I say, in the old days we didn’t recognize the danger of carbohydrates. We believed that the reason you got fat was from eating “calories,” which are tiny units of measurement that cause food to taste good. When we wanted to lose weight, we went on low-calorie diets in which we ate only inedible foods such as celery, which is actually a building material, and grapefruit, which is nutritious but offers the same level of culinary satisfaction as chewing on an Odor Eater.

The problem with the low-calorie diet was that a normal human could stick to it for, at most, four hours, at which point he or she would have no biological choice but to sneak out to the garage and snork down an entire bag of Snickers, sometimes without removing the wrappers. So nobody lost weight, and everybody felt guilty all the time. Many people, in desperation, turned to disco.

But then along came the bold food pioneer who invented the Atkins Diet: Dr. Something Atkins. After decades of research on nutrition and weight gain—including the now-famous Hostess Ding Dong diet experiment, which resulted in a laboratory rat the size of a Plymouth Voyager—Dr. Atkins discovered an amazing thing: Calories don’t matter! What matter are carbohydrates, which result when a carbo molecule and a hydrate molecule collide at high speeds and form tiny invisible doughnuts.

Dr. Atkins’ discovery meant that—incredible though it seemed—as long as you avoided carbohydrates, you could, without guilt, eat high-fat, high-calorie foods such as cheese, bacon, lard, pork rinds, and whale. You could eat an entire pig, as long as the pig had not recently been exposed to bread.

At first, like other groundbreaking pioneers such as Galileo and Eminem, Dr. Atkins met with skepticism, even hostility. The low-calorie foods industry went after him big time. The Celery Growers Association hired a detective to—yes—stalk him. His car tires were repeatedly slashed by what police determined to be shards of Melba toast.

But Dr. Atkins persisted, because he had a dream—a dream that, some day, he would help the human race by selling it 427 million diet books. And he did, achieving vindication for his diet before his tragic demise in an incident that the autopsy report listed as “totally unrelated to the undigested 28-pound bacon cheeseburger found in his stomach.”

But the Atkins Diet lives on, helping millions of Americans to lose weight. The irony is, you can’t tell this by looking at actual Americans, who have, as a group, become so heavy that North America will soon be underwater as far inland as Denver. Which can only mean one thing: You people are still sneaking Snickers. You should be ashamed of yourselves! Got any more?

Editor’s Note: Dave Barry is a humor columnist for The Miami Herald. Write to him c/o The Miami Herald, One Herald Plaza, Miami, FL 33132.


Technorati Tags:
diet
lose weight
hoodia
health and wellness
food
diary

Where does the time go!

I can´t beleive it´s been a week since I last posted!! Doesen´t time fly when you´re having fun!! I´ve had a really busy week and the weather has been fabulous so I haven´t spent much time indoors.

The good thing about being busy is you don´t have too much time to think about what you´re eating. Although there is a downside to having to be out of the house a lot. That is deciding what you are going to eat when you are faced with the choice of all those lovely restaurants in the shopping centers. Will it be KFC, BurgerKing.....or maybe some TexMex........and then when you go to the Cafe to have a nice coffee to recharge your batteries................Oh My God!! All those delicious cakes just begging to be picked........pick me..pick me...says the most delicious cream cake....hahahahahaha!!

That´s the good thing about taking the Hoodia Pills. You really don´t feel hungry at all, so you can shop till you drop without thinking about filling up. And even if you are tempted to indulge yourself, you will find that you just can´t finish what you order! You will feel full half way through and won´t be able to force those final mouthfuls in at all!

It really doesn´t feel like being on a diet. And you don´t have to bore everyone to death with the details of the latest fad....you know how it goes "I´m allowed to have sausages but no bread....blah blah blah!!"

Get yourself off that Fad Diet Treadmill right now!! Try Hoodia yourself and change the way you diet forever!



Technorati Tags:
diet
lose weight
hoodia
health and wellness
food
diary

Common Myths From The Weight Loss Crowd

Myth: You’ll be OK with a high protein/low carb diet
Fact: This type of diet aims to secure most of the daily required amount of calories from protein foods, such as meat, dairy products and eggs, with a very small part taken from foods containing a lot of carbs (bread, pasta, potatoes and fruits). The biggest problem with this diet is that many common and popular foods are forbidden, which makes it easy for the user to get bored or frustrated. When boredom and frustration set in, quitting time is never far off. Another problem is the lack of nutrients that are usually brought in by carbohydrate foods, while allowing the user to eat bacon and cheese that raise cholesterol levels.

The bottom line is that high protein/low carb diets result in fast weight loss in some users, but it’s not just fat that goes away. People also lose some of their lean muscle mass and a lot of water as the kidneys work harder to rid the body of excess waste from protein and fat.

The added stress to your kidneys is not healthy at all and, in the long run, will lead to dehydration, headaches, feelings of nausea and dizziness. Before engaging in a long-term diet, you would do well to discuss it with your physician. And if you are really keen on dieting, try a balanced diet first, because it will help you lose weight without hurting your system.

Myth: Permanent weight loss can be achieved with fad diets.
Fact: This is yet another common myth among the weight loss crowd. Like any other diet that tells you to cut this or that food from your daily meals, fad diets are not healthy for you. The cornerstone of any diet is supplying the body with all the calories, proteins and minerals it needs. Diets that cut out foods without regard for the needs of your body cannot be healthy for you. Fad diets fail to deliver on the promise of permanent weight loss because people will always crave the forbidden foods and will always end up breaking the rules and ditching the diet.

The key to making weight loss permanent is more exercise and to avoid eating food that makes you fat without nourishing your body. Our extensive studies confirmed the importance of exercising and of a well-balanced diet.

Myth: Low-fat or no fat food is always a good choice.
Fact: The only low fat foods that are also low in calories are fruits. The rest of the huge low-fat or non-fat group are not a safe choice if you are dieting. These products may have added sugar, starch or flour to make them taste better, which means extra calories that do not belong into your diet. So make sure you check the list of ingredients on packages whenever you decide to buy low-fat.

Myth: Switching to vegetarian food will help you lose weight and stay healthy.
Fact: I know this is a hard pill to swallow, but no food plan will work for you unless you take charge of your eating and make sure that everything that goes past your lips is the right kind of food. The key here is to be absolutely sure that the vegetarian diet will give your body all the nutrients and calories it needs. Eating heaps of foods that do nothing for you from the nutritional point of view, outside maybe of filling your stomach, can bring you a lot of trouble in the future.

Since plants tend to have a lower concentration of nutrients than meat, you will have to eat more food than before to make up for this difference. Not to mention that a strictly vegetarian diet will not get you enough vitamin B12, vitamin D, iron, calcium and zinc. These substances are taken mostly from dairy products and eggs in a regular diet, but true vegetarians can’t touch those. You’ll have to rely on the few and uncommon vegetables that can provide these substances.

Myth: Dairy products cause heart problems and make you fat.
Fact: Well, thanks to modern medicine everybody knows that eating a lot of dairy products is a surefire path to high blood pressure and stroke, although a large group of people from France refuse to die despite the large quantities of cheese and wine they consume.

Dairy products are the main source of calcium that keeps your bones strong and healthy. It is absolutely essential for children and can be in no way overlooked by adults. Dairy products also contain vitamin D, which is crucial to maintaining the normal levels of calcium and phosphorus in your bloodstream.

If you don’t want to gain weight from dairy products, then choose low-fat or non-fat brands. There are enough of those around. If you are lactose-intolerant, drink soy or rice milk. It does not taste exactly the same as true milk, but it’s still good and nutritious.

Butter and margarine are the only dairy products you should worry about. They do contain big levels of fat. Still, if you can’t do without them, at least eat butter. Margarine is an over-processed fat that is not particularly good for you. Butter may be a bit fatter, but it definitely is the healthier of these two.