Shakes rattle how GP rolls
Whether you choose to replace your meals with fruits, salad or vegetables or begin your detox with a small fast (whereby you eat very little for a day or two), a short period of low calorie eating will do wonders for your body. Very rarely do we eat our meal or snacks because of hunger; rather we eat because have been programmed to or because there is tasty food available.
A period of fasting helps us to get back in touch with our natural appetite, helps to deplete some of our glycogen stores so you are ready to burn more fat, and gives the cells a reboot. One to two days of light eating or fasting is more than enough, while you drink plenty of water and herbal tea to ensure you keep hydrated. Not only does a low calorie, vegie-rich soup boost your nutrition by loading you up with a tonne of vegetables, but the high water content of your soup coupled with lots of potassium courtesy of all the vegies helps to quickly flush the body of extra fluid it may have been holding on to from a diet high in sugars, processed carbs and salt.
Simply adding a vegetable soup into your daily menu is likely to give you a 1–2kg drop on the scales very quickly and, although this will mainly be water weight, it’s a safe and healthy way to feel lighter and more energised quickly. This translates into whole fruits and juices, vegetables, salads, lean proteins such as fish and eggs, and fruit and nuts for snacks. When your diet is focused around fresh, natural and unprocessed foods, your calorie intake is automatically reduced while your diet is higher in fibre and nutrients.
Simple meals of an omelet with vegetables, a tuna or salmon salad for lunch, and a grill of fish or chicken breast at night along with 2–3 cups of vegetables or salad, will keep you full and satisfied while supporting weight loss. Not only do herbal teas help to reduce fluid retention, but they contain no calories or caffeine, making them the perfect hot drink choice to complement your detox.
Aimfor at least 2L a day of a mix of herbal tea, infused water, vegetable juice and water on your detox, and keep in mind that you may experience some caffeine withdrawal symptoms such as headaches and irritability initially, especially if you usually consume large volumes of tea, coffee and cola drinks. These symptoms should resolve after a day or two. While a period of low calorie eating can do wonders for the metabolism, a time of eating very little calls for gentle exercise, not hours flogging yourself at the gym. This means your detox will be complemented with lots of movement and walking, as well as plenty of sleep as your body withdraws from the more processed foods and drinks it is used to running off. You will find that after a couple of big sleeps you will suddenly wake up feeling more refreshed and energised than you have for some time. AN AUSTRALIAN study has made the surprising claim that protein shakes can affect your mortality.
Body+soul asked its resident GP, Dr Sam Hay, to weigh in. “This study found that protein shakes with added amino acids could cause premature death, mood swings and obesity,” he explained.
He noted that the study wasn’t done on humans, so the outcomes wouldn’t necessarily be the same, but said we could learn some lessons from this.
“Firstly, there’s a huge variation in what constitutes a ‘protein shake’,” he says. “Simple casein or whey protein powders should be 100 per cent natural, but products with added branched-chain amino acids [BCAAS] are the ones you need to watch out for. Small amounts here and there are unlikely to be an issue, but this report does highlight increasing evidence that they may well be."
While he said this doesn’t mean you need to stop using protein powders, he added it’s important to remember they’re just for convenience.
“Consider these results as a warning that unnatural sources of BCAAS are perhaps not as safe as we first thought. It’s changed my opinion and I won’t be using them again.”
bodyandsoul.com.au