wellness tips

Here is a trick to improve your digestion and help you eat less food, if you tend to overeat. Chew your food until it is liquid in your mouth before swallowing.

Digestion starts with the enzymes in the mouth, so the more you mix the food with saliva, and the more you break down the food with your teeth, the less work your stomach and digestive tract has to do.

If you have any digestion issues, this can make a big difference.

This will also slow down your meals, giving you the opportunity to enjoy the taste of the food, and may help you eat less, because you will feel satisfied before you have gulped down huge amounts of food.

It takes a while for the satiety centre to send out the message that you have eaten enough, so if you eat quickly it is easy to eat too much before you get the signal. Then you suffer by feeling stuffed. So slow down, contemplate your food, and enjoy your meals fully.

Chek, Paul; How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! Chek Institute, San Diego, CA, 2004.

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The “one-size-fits-all” concept does not apply to eating healthy. We each need to personally figure out what ratio of carbs, proteins and fats works best for our own metabolism – the ratio which sustains us without hunger for at least 3 hours, gives us energy, mental clarity and the ability to focus, and a sense of emotional wellbeing. Our food is the drug we take 3 times a day, so getting this right can bring one back to vibrant health.

Have you ever wondered why the bookstore shelves are filled with completely different types of eating plans ranging from the high protein and fat Atkins diet to the low fat high carb Pritiken diet, to the Zone, which advocates an eating plan somewhere between the two? Is one type of book completely right and the others completely wrong? No! They are all correct.

It depends on the chemistry and metabolism of the person as to which diet will support and sustain that individual. Don’t you think that if there were only one way for us to eat for optimal health we would have figured it out by now?

As Roger Williams explains in his book Biochemical Individuality we are as different on the inside as we are on the outside, and to think that we would all require exactly the same nutrition seems almost silly.

If you would rather watch a video than read about this, here it is!

If you are interested in learning more about how your nutrition can be customized to you, sign up here. I can help via phone and email, or if you are in the Vancouver area and you prefer, we can meet up face to face.

The Inuit of northern Canada, who traditionally ate a high protein high fat diet and had very little or no access to any vegetation for much of the year due to snow cover, were extremely healthy, did not suffer from constipation as one might assume considering the extreme lack of fibre in their diet, and did not suffer from heart disease or cancer.

However in today’s modern world, they are consuming much more carbohydrate, and are consequently developing symptoms and disease such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

On the flip side of that, because of the lack of large game, most tribes in South America traditionally did best on an almost vegetarian diet supplementing with the meat of small animals. They become ill when they eat too much meat and/or fat.

Just like a diesel truck does not function well on high octane fuel, and a sports car does not function on diesel, the kind of fuel needed depends on the nature of the cells of the individual.

If you happen to have the metabolism of an Inuit and you eat a diet suited to a South American tribe, your cells would be starving for proteins and fats and swimming in carbs (all vegetables and fruit are carbohydrates), and therefore they would be unable to function adequately, and over time this poor cell function may lead to health problems. All the excess carbs that cannot be used would then be stored as fat.

And if you are eating a paleo diet and are eating inadequate carbs for your metabolism, you will probably feel lethargic, and lacking in energy. This lack of cellular energy will slow your metabolism also resulting in weight gain.

A diet with the wrong ratios may in time create a disease, but the cause of that disease in one person may be a diet too high in carbs, whereas in another person the cause of the same disease may be a diet too high in proteins and fats.

So, how do you learn what kinds of foods are best for YOU and in what ratio your cells require those foods? You can play with your ratios while keeping a log in order to figure it out.

Doing the metabolic typing test is the easiest way to determine how YOUR body metabolizes your food, and therefore the type of diet that will regulate your weight, give you sustained energy, reduce your cravings, and reduce your mood swings.

You would learn what foods are optimal for you, what foods are not good for you, as one man's food is another man's poison. It is never about the food, but how a particular food interacts with your own personal biochemistry. You would also learn your own personal optimal ratios of proteins, fats and carbs.

If you are interested in potentially doing the metabolic typing test, sign up here to learn more. If you decide to do the test, I am happy to be your advisor via phone and email, or if you are in the Vancouver area and you prefer, we can meet up face to face.

I would suggest that unless you have already eliminated all processed foods from your diet, that you begin your nutrition journey by doing the online nutrition course "Why the food guides are wrong", first.  Once you have integrated that information into your diet, you will find it easier to stick to and gain the benefits from your personalized nutrition plan, as the dietary changes needed won't be as dramatic.

Feel free to pass on this tip or any of the others to your relatives, friends or colleagues, and suggest that they sign up for their weekly tip at the website below.

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Posture is the place from which movement begins and ends, and good posture means better quality movement, which in turn leads to less wear and tear on joint surfaces and therefore less pain. As we adopt a particular postural habit such as sitting slouched with our head forward to look at a computer screen, over many months and years our body tends to “harden” into that posture, and when we stand up, we wind up standing with a slouch and a forward head. Our bodies function best in good posture, so developing good postural habits can improve not only sports performance, but also the quality of our lives by reducing muscle and joint pain caused by poor posture.

So, what does good posture feel like? Stand up, close your eyes, and notice where you feel the weight of your body. Is it even through both feet? Do you feel the weight going through the muscles at the front of the hips? Do you feel any compression in your low back? If someone were to push gently down on your shoulders, would you buckle anywhere, or would you be as steady as a post?

Adjust yourself so that you feel the weight going directly through the leg bones rather than through any soft tissue. Most of you will probably have to bring your pelvis back over your heels a little more to get that feeling. Now slightly lift your ribcage up off of your pelvis, and let your shoulders relax down on your heightened ribcage. Do not squeeze your shoulders together in the back – if anything, think about separating them slightly from each other. Now, lift the base of the skull (top of the neck at the back) up as high as it will go without any strain. You should feel that you are as tall and as wide as you can be – that you are taking up as much space as you can. Is the weight still going through your leg bones? Notice how long you feel, and how tension is supporting your body rather than compression.

Now sit down, making sure you are sitting on top of your sit bones rather than behind them, and feel the weight go through the sit bones as you go through the same exercise above. Now set your watch or your computer to beep at you every 10 minutes, and check your posture. If you follow through and heed the constant reminder for about 3 weeks, your posture will improve.

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Here is a really easy and inexpensive way to sanitize your kitchen counters and cutting boards, killing bacteria such as Salmonella and E. Coli without using toxic cleaners that are hard on you and the environment. Get two separate spray bottles and fill one with white vinegar or apple cidre vinegar, and the other with 3% hydrogen peroxide (the usual kind that is sold in drug stores). Spray with one bottle, then spray immediately with the other, and wipe clean. Keeping the vinegar and hydrogen peroxide in separate bottles is more effective than mixing them into one bottle, and spraying with one bottle and then the other is more effective than using either vinegar or hydrogen peroxide alone. Tested at Virgina Polytechnical Institute and State University, this combination was extremely effective at killing harmful bacteria – even more effective than chlorine bleach and most commercial cleaners. So clean and disinfect just as effectively without the risk of inhaling or absorbing toxic chemicals through your skin, or harming the environment!

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