10 Diet Rules You Can Break

There are actually diet rules out there that are meant to be broken? Yes, recently many dated diet guidelines and myths are up for speculation. You've probably heard all these silly rules before, but experts weigh-in on the worthiness of these supposed truisms - most of which won't help you lose weight or make dieting any easier.

10 Food Rules You Can Ignore:

1. Eating at night will pile on the pounds. The total calories you consume over a 24-hour period or over a week is what causes you to gain weight, and when you eat these calories doesn't matter.

2. It's best to eat at the same times every day. Eat when you're hungry, not when the clock says it's time to eat.

3. Dieting with a buddy always makes weight loss easier. Common goals may pay off but weight loss is a personal journey.

4. Dietary fat keeps you feeling full longer, so you'll eat less. Fat does take longer to digest, but it will not help you control your appetite. Foods likely to fight off hunger the longest are protein foods, followed by carbohydrates, then fats.

5. When you blow your diet, you might as well wait until the next day to get back on track. Nothing could be farther from the truth- always try to get right back on track with your next meal.

6. Refusing food at a party or when visiting is rude. Turning down food that you know will blow your diet is socially acceptable.

7. Skipping a meal every now and then will help you lose. Skipping a meal means you will be so hungry at the next meal that you are likely to overeat. This can also  help lead to a slowdown of your metabolism.

8. Bread is fattening, nuts are fattening, pasta is fattening. Whole-wheat bread/pasta is a great source of nutrients, and it won't make you gain weight more than any other food with the same number of calories.

9. All calories are equal. This is somewhat true, however; you'll get more nutrients from a 100-calorie apple than from a 100-calorie portion of white bread. Choose healthier items if you are losing weight, or controlling your hunger.

10. If you don't clean your plate, you're wasting food. If you just don't feel right leaving the table until you've cleaned your plate, underestimate your hunger and put less food on your plate to begin with, or you may overeat.

Don't believe everything you hear! Much of it is just superstition. Now you can tell your friends the real truth. In the end, nutrition experts say, many of the food and dieting rules we hold dear are meant to be broken - without guilt!

The Medicinal Value of Sweet Potato

Sweet potato is also very common in life eat the food. Sweet potato from the perspective of Chinese medicine, it has the effect of spleen qi, and can prolong life. Effect much more than sweet potato, its high medicinal value in fact, can prevent four of malignant disease.

Sweet Potato

1. Sweet potato have anticancer effects
The most anti-cancer diet of nutrients is β-carotene (vitamin A precursor), vitamin C and folic acid, and in the sweet potatoes are rich in three levels. A small sweet potato (about 2 double) provides 2 times the amount of human daily requirement of vitamin A, one-third of the required amount of vitamin C per day and about 50 micrograms of folic acid; one bowl of dietary fiber content is higher than oatmeal.

 β-carotene and vitamin C can help fight the antioxidant role of oxidative stress on the genetic material deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) damage, play a role in cancer.
Eat sweet potatoes help maintain the body's normal folate levels, the body folic acid content is too low it increases the risk of cancer. Sweet potatoes have high levels of dietary fiber to promote gastrointestinal peristalsis, prevent constipation and colon cancer effect.

2. Sweet potatoes good for the heart
Sweet potatoes are rich in potassium, β-carotene, folic acid, vitamin C and vitamin B6, which are 5 components to help prevent cardiovascular disease. Potassium helps the body cells in fluid and electrolyte balance, maintaining normal blood pressure and heart function.
β-carotene and vitamin C has anti-lipid oxidation, prevention of the role of atherosclerosis. Folic acid and vitamin B6 helps to lower blood homocysteine levels, which can damage the arteries, is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

3. Sweet potatoes to prevent emphysema
University of Kansas an animal study found that smoking rats low levels of vitamin A, prone to emphysema; and eating foods rich in vitamin A while smoking rats significantly reduced the incidence of emphysema.
Why do some long-term smokers live to be 90 years old, but no emphysema, may be related to their daily diet rich in vitamin A content related. The researchers recommended that smokers or passive smokers eat some of the best foods rich in vitamin A such as sweet potatoes, to prevent emphysema.

4. Sweet potato has anti-diabetic effects
Japanese researchers found that obese diabetic rats eating white sweet potato 4 weeks, 6 weeks after the blood insulin levels were reduced by 26%, 60%; and found that sweet potatoes can inhibit oral glucose in obese rats with diabetes blood sugar levels rise after high; eating sweet potatoes can also be reduced in diabetic rats the level of triglycerides and free fatty acids.

White sweet potato research suggests a certain anti-diabetic effect. University of Vienna, Austria, a clinical study found that type 2 diabetes patients taking extract of white sweet potato, its improved insulin sensitivity, helps to control blood sugar.

Sweet potato has been used along with food and medicine as a nutritionist, nutritionally balanced food, the heat it only weighs a third of the heat generated by the rice, and almost no fat and cholesterol. Eat sweet potatoes good for human health, and have a certain weight-loss effect. But do not eat a sweet potato to eat too much, in order to avoid heartburn, abdominal bloating and other acid or back discomfort.

Is coffee good or bad for you?

Many sober, law abiding people who would never dream of knowingly ingesting a mind- altering drug, actually consume one every day's caffeine!

Caffeine is so pervasive in our culture and in many other cultures that we often forget it is actually a drug that affects our brain.  Caffeine is present in coffee, tea, many cola drinks and over the counter medications.

The most common way that most of us ingest caffeine is in the form of coffee.  And some of us drink many cups of coffee in a day.

If you are one of those people who drinks a lot of coffee daily, you probably wonder what all that coffee is doing to you.  Is coffee really bad for you, or is drinking coffee just a harmless vice?  Can it be possible that coffee is actually good for us? 

The research on coffee shows mixed results.  Some studies show that drinking coffee increases the rate of heart attacks, while other studies have shown that drinking large amounts of coffee decreases the risk of diabetes.

There are nutritional advisers who claim that coffee makes us age faster, wears out our adrenal glands, and causes all sorts of untold damage to our cells. 

Other researchers claim that coffee, especially if it's freshly roasted and ground, is full of antioxidants, and therefore good for us.  Most doctors say that drinking one or two cups of coffee a day is probably not harmful.  And of course there are others who say we ought to avoid caffeine altogether.

The one thing that most researchers and most coffee drinkers agree on is that coffee can keep us awake at night and cause insomnia if we drink it late in the day.

Yet many of us drink coffee precisely because we want to boost up the activity of our brain cells, especially when we first wake up.

Many of us feel that we cannot really get going in the morning until we have had our first cup of coffee.  We often continue to drink coffee throughout the day whenever our energy appears to be flagging and our brain seems to need additional help to think more clearly. 

Does caffeine really enhance mental performance, or is that just a myth?  Yes, caffeine does give a temporary boost to brain cells.  But the amount required to improve mental performance is not very high.  Even half a cup of coffee will be enough to give your brain a boost that lasts several hours.

Oddly enough, more caffeine is not necessarily better.  In one test done when high-level executives were given the equivalent of fourteen cups of coffee in a day, they made their decisions faster, but the decisions were not of very good quality.

Not every person reacts to caffeine in the same way.  Some people experience greater mental clarity, alertness and productivity after a cup of coffee.  Other people become jittery, anxious, or depressed when they drink coffee.  Although caffeine will keep most of us awake if taken at night, it does not have this effect in everyone.
 
In some older people, coffee or tea can improve memory and alertness enough to partly offset the effects of aging. 

It is true that caffeine is mildly addicting for most people.  Some people can quit using caffeine with absolutely no withdrawal symptoms, while others will feel headaches, fatigue, and experience cravings for caffeine for weeks.

Caffeine works by blocking one of the neurotransmitters--adenosin which normally tells brain cells to calm down.  Brain cells that have been affected by caffeine will remain excited and on high alert for several hours.

The most noticeable negative effect of caffeine is that it can interfere with sleep.  In most people, drinking coffee, tea or cola in the late afternoon or in the evening will cause insomnia. 

If you are particularly affected by caffeine, you will find that the quantity and quality of your sleep will be greatly reduced.  This can set off a vicious cycle, where you  feel so tired all the next day that you drink a lot more coffee just to try to feel awake.

If this is happening to you, cut back on the amount of coffee you consume each day.  You may experience fewer withdrawal symptoms if you cut down gradually.  You may wish to substitute green tea for some of your cups of coffee.  Green tea has some caffeine, but not as much as coffee.

Better yet, consider substituting exercise for some of those cups of coffee.  If you can't leave your workplace, at least get up from your chair periodically. 

Do a few stretches, walk around a bit, and jump up and down a few times.  Take some deep breaths.  A little exercise break can revitalize your brain without giving you the caffeine jitters. 

Remember that your brain won't really benefit from more than one or two cups of coffee in a day.