Try These Fantastic Brunch Recipes to Improve Your Health

Brunch is a great meal if you are on a diet. Your mid-morning nutrition could be the key to your wellness and wellbeing.

 

This recipe for multi-grain buttermilk waffles could help transform the mid-morning munchies from being a dangerous time for your diet to being a great time to boost up your body for the day ahead.

 

Traditionally, waffles are packed with calories and fats, not to mention carbs, making them a hugely indulgent treat. This recipe transforms them into being a healthy snack, which have the crisp and sweet appeal of the original without all of the calories and fat.

 

This recipe makes 16 waffles and takes around 30 minutes to prepare and 45 minutes to cook. To cook them, you need two cups of buttermilk, two thirds of a cup of whole-wheat flour, half a cup of rolled oats, two thirds of a cup of all-purpose flour, one and a half teaspoons of baking powder, quarter of a cup of toasted wheat germ or cornmeal, half a teaspoon of baking soda, quarter of a teaspoon of salt, two large eggs (lightly beaten), one teaspoon of ground cinnamon, quarter of a cup of brown sugar, a tablespoon of canola oil and two teaspoons of vanilla.

 

Mix the buttermilk together with the oats in a medium-sized bowl and then allow the mixture to stand for 15 minutes. Whisk together the whole-wheat flour, what germ (or cornmeal), all-purpose flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Stir the eggs, oil, vanilla and sugar into the oat mixture. Add all the wet ingredients to the dry, mix them with a rubber spatula until its all moistened.

 

Coat a waffle iron in cooking spray and then spoon enough batter to cover most of the surface. Cook the waffles until they are crisp and golden brown in colour.

Categories: brunch, diet, slimming

Sip Your Way to a Skinnier You with Slimming Teas

If you’ve ever wandered around a health food shop, your eye may have fallen on a selection of slimming teas. Sure, you know that a healthy diet and exercise regime is essential to your weight loss wellness, but could a slimming tea give your wellbeing the boost it needs to help you shed those extra pounds? If an accelerated metabolism is what you’re looking for – and, let’s face it, who isn’t? – a cup of slimming tea could be just what the doctor ordered.

 

While all slimming teas are different, in many cases they cure your cravings and suppress your appetite while giving your metabolism a much-needed boost. The health benefits of slimming teas go back to ancient Eastern times, but now we’ve got hold of the magic formula in the modern West, and we’re not going back! Generally speaking, you need to drink two cups of slimming tea per day to aid weight loss, but, before you do, it’s probably a good idea to know what you’re drinking. Slimming teas are naturally free of caffeine, and contain a blend of Oolong tea and Green teas. The ingredients in slimming teas rev up your metabolism while also helping your mind and body to relax.

 

Though it seems counterintuitive, relaxation is a vital component of weight loss. While you may think that action is the name of the game, you also need to relax because anxiety and stress contribute to weight gain. Therefore, the weight loss benefits of slimming tea are two-fold, both directly and indirectly helping you to lose a few pounds. Another important factor to note is that, unlike other “diet teas,” slimming teas are not packed with laxatives. Rather, they naturally help your digestive system by increasing its efficiency and accelerating your body’s metabolism. Moreover, a steaming cup of slimming tea will definitely warm you up and also make you feel more energetic, giving you the oomph you need to take up your workout routine.

 

Slimming teas are especially beneficial if you’re on a special diet to lose weight, due to the fact that they help to reduce cravings and also aid in digestion. If your weight loss eating plan is high in protein, for example, you may be experiencing constipation or indigestion, with which slimming teas can help. Many people prefer to drink their cup of slimming tea before bedtime, but, as it helps with digestion, the best time to drink your cup is after meals. As the teas do not contain sugar, they won’t add unnecessary calories to your diet plan. Plus, the lack of caffeine in slimming teas mean that you won’t fall prey to bloating. Other benefits of slimming teas include:

 

-          Mood stabilization

-          Better sleep

-          Increased libido

-          Regular bowel movements

-          Clearer skin with overall balanced complexion

 

If you’re convinced, why not try making your own slimming teas at home? That way, you know exactly what’s going into your body, and you can ensure you’re getting nothing but natural, healthy ingredients. Here’s our recipe to get you started:

 

-          1 part Oolong tea

-          1 part Green tea

-          1 part Nettle leaf

-          1 part Eleuthero root

-          1 part Senna leaf

-          1 part Dandelion leaf

-          ½ part Sweet Cinnamon Bark

-          ½ part Orange peel

-          ½ part Ginger root

-          ¼ part Fennel seeds

 

This herbal tea will detoxify your liver, remove fatty deposits from your liver, help to regenerate healthy liver cells. This is on top of the fact that it will suppress your appetite and boost your metabolism, but a healthy liver means that your overall system and metabolism will improve.

Categories: healthy liver, Metabolism, nbsp, oolong tea, reduced appetite, slimming, slimming tea, slimming teas, teas, weight, Weight Loss

The Top Four Lifestyle Changes For Weight Loss

Are you someone who wants to lose weight? It’s probably true that more people than not feel like they could stand to lose weight and slim down with a diet or a fitness regime. There are literally thousands of plans out there, ranging from celebrities spilling their fantastic weight loss secrets, to famous diets like the Atkins diet, that promise the perfect way to lose weight, tone up and get the body that you crave. It’s a nice idea, isn’t it? But given how many people still want to lose weight, despite the presence of all these supposed miracle cures, it seems that actually, they cannot be relied upon to produce the results that you are looking for.

 

So in the face of failing diets and forgotten fitness regimes, we need to look for a new method that will work in the short and long term. Unfortunately, most diets seem to rely on cutting out the food that you love and encouraging a draconian fitness regimen that virtually no-one can stick to. That can leave us asking the question – is there really any sensible way to lose weight and keep the weight off? The truth is that there is, but they involve genuine changes in your lifestyle that you need to stick to, rather than short term crash diets that will just leave you feeling unwell and unable to continue the weight loss. Here are our top four lifestyle changes that will have you slimming down on no time.

 

Lifestyle Change 1: Don’t eat after 7pm

Food digestion is very hard work for your body, breaking down the food into material that is useful for the organs of the body is a complicated process. The problem is that while the body is focussed on breaking down the food it can’t do many of the other processes that are very important to it. When you go to bed with a full stomach you are actually hampering the natural metabolism of the body at night. This means that if you go to bed not long after you’ve eaten, you’ll actually store a lot of the fat in the food, rather than using it as energy.

 

Lifestyle Change 2: Eat Five Small Meals Per Day

Most people find themselves in the habit of eating three large meals a day. This is something that many of us are accustomed to, but it might not be the best thing for our body. Eating smaller meals makes digestion easier for our bodies and also promotes a fast metabolism. The fact that we are eating at shorter intervals also means that you are less likely to get very hungry during the day and binge on junk food.

 

Lifestyle Change 3: Eating a healthy breakfast with a good source of protein

It is important to get a good breakfast as one of your daily meals; that is well known, but just as important is getting a good source of protein in on that breakfast. Eggs are a great choice but you could also go for something like lean meats such as turkey or a protein-rich spread like peanut butter. Avoid cereals as these break down quickly and leave you feeling hungrier sooner.

 

Lifestyle Change 4: Avoid sugar and refined carbs

It might seem like something that is obvious and found in every single diet ever. But removing sugar and refined carbs from what you eat will speed up your metabolism as well as taking down the amount of calories that you eat during the day. This is only a good thing for your weight loss.

Categories: body, Food, lifestyle, Lifestyle Change, Lose weight, nbsp lifestyle, refined carbs, slimming, weight, Weight Loss

African Culture Shifts in Favour of Fuller-Figured Women

While women have, in recent years, deemed thin as synonymous with, a new trend appears to have sneaked into vogue, displacing the once yearned-for-by-men and envied-by-women skinny model. Now, the voluptuous bodies of Beyonce, Nicki Minaj, Shakira and Jennifer Lopez are what we’re after, and this trend is certainly on the rise in Africa.

Peter Mugagga, a student at Makerere University, Kampala, explains, ‘Not that they aren’t pretty, but slimming girls look like fragile pretty little things that are good to look at but too delicate to touch.’ He notes that curvy women have a womanly vibe, ‘without any protruding bones or ribs to jab you when you embrace them.’ Real estate developer Steven Akiiki adds, ‘Slimming women show that they are overly concerned with what others think of them. They change from being a person into a consumer product seeking purchase.’

Dr Tabley Bakyaita, a health educator at the Health ministry, scoffs at weight loss in order to look like skinny celebrities, calling it a crazy wellness practice. ‘Men have never prescribed the kind of size a woman should be. Why, then, do young girls copy those exaggerated model sizes that can be risky to their lives?’ According to Dr Bakyaita, Western magazines and internet are to blame for having models’ photos with exaggerated thin bodies, ‘which our girls copy’.

Yet one person against the new trend towards curvier figures is professional model Vincent Kaliisa, who makes no apology for slimming. ‘Fashion and trends work together with our bodies,’ he says. ‘A woman is, therefore, expected to do anything possible [like slimming] to look nice.’ Yet Makerere University’s Professor of Nutrition and Bio-engineering John Muyonga advises a healthy balance: ‘It is healthy for someone to reduce or add weight as long as they remain within the ranges of the body mass index. The normal indices are always between 18.5 and 25, anything below or above that is considered abnormal.’

According to Dr Eria Olowo Onyango, a Makerere University social anthropologist, it’s not surprising that the trend is changing. ‘Culture grows through people picking and dropping certain practices,’ he says. ‘This idea of slimming is like a full circle. Some women took up the Western slimming phenomenon but after some time, we now see them go back to the original African full woman.’

Categories: Africa, fuller figures, slimming

How Swimming Helps Soldiers Slim Down And Boosts Health

A new programme has been developed to help soldiers who are struggling either with their cardio/heart health or with their weight control. This was developed by Sgt. Corey Bell of the 4^th Brigade Combat Team, 1^st Armoured Division.

He is one of a number of non-commissioned officers who need to ensure that their wellness, wellbeing and fitness are at such a level that they would be available for any mission. These officers are the backbone of the army and need to be ready at a moment’s notice, making it extra important for them to keep on top of their physical health and fitness, but this can be a hard thing to achieve.

Sgt. Bell was faced with this situation as he tried to help one of the soldiers in his command to improve his run time and to lose some extra weight, too.

At the same time, Bell began to take part in a long-distance swim programme, which was a period of intense preparation for the German Armed Forces Military Proficiency Badge.

He took his soldier along with him, and they went to the pool every day at lunchtime, swimming for the whole of lunchtime and eating their lunch on the way back to their posts. This plan that he devised was intended to take swimmers from being able to swim only a little way to gradually increasing their stamina to the stage of being able to swim for a mile without stopping.

Bell is enthusiastic about the opportunity that exercising in the water offers, as it raises the heart rate without the risk of injury, as the impact when swimming is virtually nonexistent. It takes far less time to burn off the amount of energy that you would when participating in another sport on the land.

The soldier in his command lost over 30 pounds during the time of swimming and is grateful that he trusted Bell’s swimming plan, as well as a diet that Bell devised for him.

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How Swimming Helps Soldiers Slim Down And Boosts Health

Categories: slimming, soldiers, Swimming