Sweet Satisfaction for Diet

     High in Fibre, vitamin A, beta carotene and low in glycaemic index, the humble sweet potato is a great  vegetable to add to any diet.

     Meet the sweet potato, arguably the most nutritious vegetable around. A root vegetable, it has more fibre than oatmeal when eaten with the skin on. As its orange color hints at, it has almost twice the recommended daily allowance of vitamin A and four times the recommended daily allowance for beta caratene, an antioxidant.

     I learnt this from reading a nutrition chart tacked on the wall of a riverside cafe in Vacouver, Canada. It was serving hamburgers with wedges of sweet potato, which North Americans call a yam. I could not believe the good numbers associated with this tuber, which also tasted better than any ordinary potato wedge.

     I looked at the sweet potato in a different light. And there is more.

     Despite its sweetness, diabetics can eat it because it has a low glycaemic index.

     If you do not already know, the glycaemic index is one of the most important measures for foods. It ranks how quickly the body converts carbohydrates into sugar. The lower the glycaemic index in a food, the slower it will be digested. This causes the level of blood sugar to rise gradually rather than quickly, which is important for diabetics. This also means that you feel satisfied longer, which is beneficial for weight loss control.

     According to nutritionists, the single most important change that most people can make in their diets is to replace fatty foods with foods rich in complex carbohydrates and with a low glycaemic index, such as sweet potatoes.

     Since I found out about this, I have been adding sweet potato to my menus and there are many ways to do this, even in local recipes.

     Sweet potato Salad is so healthy, I do not feel bad about adding roast duck (without the skin) in the diet dish.

     Indeed, if you are counting carbohydrates in your diet, chuck out the bread, rice, potatoes and corn and eat sweet potato instead.

     A quarter of a cup of sweet potatoes has just 10g of carbohydrates - an amount that is recommended even

on carbohydrate-restricted programmes such as the Atkins diet.

Unexpected Weight-Loss Obstacles

Do you know why your effort in weight-loss has been ineffective? Maintaining body weight to an appropriate level referenced to height, skeleton and age is one of the most important things for being healthy.

But sometimes following weight-loss program by being cautious about eating and doing exercise regularly cannot meet your losing goal because of some unexpected causes.

-         Body Water Retention: Avoid eating foods that cause body water retention such as salt, soda pops, etc and eat some fruit like watermelon and orange that will reduce body water retention and get rid of a significant amount of body water.

-         Food Allergy: Food allergic symptom may be one of factors that cause your weight-loss program ineffective. Food allergy that is seriously affected to weight control mostly found is wheat allergy. Because wheat composes of Gluten which may interfere digestive system, wheat allergic symptoms will create problems in food digestion, constipation, flatulence, feeling queasy, getting cramped easily, variance in temper and even food craving. Besides, it could be other allergic symptoms that should be checked out, because it might influence body weight and also cause swelling.

-         Genetics: Specialists believe that genetics relates to obesity up to 30-40%, however, if you accidentally got obesity genes, it does not mean no hope of weight-loss, because a German researcher found that people who do exercise at least 2 hours a week might help your weight-loss.

-          Exercise the way you used to do: Our body can adjust to the routine you used for exercise with less energy consumption, therefore, changing the exercise routine or trying new ways of exercise will stimulate your body to consume more energy resulting in burning calories out.

-          Not enough sleep: Many research show relations between sleeping and the hormones that influence our eating behavior such as Ghrelin hormone which is responsible for hungry feeling and Leptin hormone which tells the brain when should stop eating. But if you do not have enough sleep, Ghrelin will increase and Leptin will reduce, resulting in feeling hungrier and do not feel full. Most people need approximate 7-9 hours of sleep, some sleep less, some sleep more, so how do we know that it is enough sleep? Specialist says that you should sleep as long as you need for several days continuously then your sleep will be stable and you will find yourself waking up after sleeping for expected hours. (15 minutes more or less) When you know how many hours needed, do that as a routine will help your weight-loss.

Truth about Genetics and Weight Loss

Tall and short, dark and light, freckled and tanned, we come in myriad packages with myriad features, most of them determined by our genetics before we ever draw breath. Very few of these traits can we control, and we just have to play the hand we're dealt.

But when people are earnestly trying to do weight loss and failing again and again, many ultimately get the sneaking suspicion that they really are playing against a stacked deck. They may be right.

If you're one of those who subscribes to the notion that America's growing weight problem is solely a failure of personal restraint or will, it's time to reconsider. Solid research is helping us understand just how truly stacked that deck is, because in addition to anything else, for some people who struggle with their weight loss,  it seems that any given exercise effort will yield far less result than it offers anyone else-because of what's already coded on their DNA.

When it comes to weight loss management, genetic factors get blamed for a lot of body issues where they may or may not have a role: "She's just big-boned." "He just carries his cargo up front." "The whole family is built that way." You've heard them all, and they might have sounded more like excuses than explanations.

But think about the genetically based elements that we already know are out of our control: People certainly do have different body types, with some of us thicker or thinner than others, and shorter or taller.

Then there's the particular predisposition for distribution, for having our weight in certain places on our bodies, which could be the old apple/pear body-type contrast, or a tendency to carry fat on the arms.

Add to those a predisposition for building muscle easily or not. And if you want to be very specific, throw in that natural love or dislike of athletic pursuits that would certainly come into play with exercise.

From just those few features, you can see how someone with a unfavorable combination of genetic factors is going to be at a disadvantage compared to someone with a better "stack" of factors.

And now there's this: researchers have identified specific combinations of genes that appear to correlate very strongly with fat retention independent of, even in spite of, exercise.

In a very closely controlled, year-long study with post-menopausal women-chosen as subjects because they are more stable, hormonally speaking-researchers divided the participants into an exercise intervention group and a control group.

All the subjects were carefully selected for specific features of their health and lifestyle. Various lab tests were taken, including certain genetic tests. The subjects were all instructed not to change their dietary habits. The control group was assigned a moderate stretching regimen to use over the course of the study, and the intervention group was given a moderate intensity, 45-minute workout for five days a week, initially with supervision. There was detailed tracking, because the researchers were especially interested in identifying distinctions between genetic and environmental factors.

At the end of the study period, the researchers found a distinct variability in the amount of fat lost by some exercisers that could not be explained by their adherence levels.

So the researchers looked to the genetic data, and indeed, there were two specific genes that stood out related to patterns of weight loss and exercise. Participants with certain combinations of those genes and their variants had significantly different weight loss outcomes.