cycle again.

If you continually eat sweet and refined foods in this fashion the pancreas becomes overloaded and eventually cannot produce enough insulin to remove the excess glucose from the blood. You are then well on the way to developing diabetes and being at risk from all the serious side effects of the disease including heart, kidney and eye problems.

Eating complex carbohydrates that digest more slowly (lower on the glycaemic index) means that you will not get the sudden surge of glucose in the blood that necessitates the quick removal, which turns the sugars into fat.

The ‘ideal’ way to eat therefore is to have 5 smaller meals spread throughout the day containing more complex carbohydrates, cutting down and preferably cutting out sweet and refined foods. This will ensure that your blood sugar stays within normal limits and doesn’t initiate the process that causes the body to store fat.

Also eat slowly, chew the food properly (enzymes in your saliva are a necessary first stage in the digestion process), and most important of all, stop eating when you are full. If you eat too fast the brain will not be given the time to register that you are full and you will eat more than you actually need.

There are of course other things that impact on weight gain including mild thyroid problems, metabolic type and food allergies/intolerances. Individual reactions to certain foods, no matter how healthy they are, can set up inflammation in the body leading to fluid retention and possible weight gain, as well as many, many other symptoms such as asthma, migraine, depression, insomnia, ADD, IBS, arthritis, eczema, etc. etc.

Bear in mind that we do not eat just to produce energy. The body needs the building blocks such as proteins, fatty acids, minerals, trace minerals and enzymes to manufacture all the many thousands of complex molecules we need to survive. We therefore need to eat a balanced diet including :-

Healthy fats and oils – to keep our cells and arteries supple and to produce hormones and other essential substances, (bearing in mind our brains are 80% fats). It is therefore, as you can see from the above, simple sugars that make us fat, and healthy oils should not be cut out of the diet completely to try to loose weight. Just eat in moderation. (Let me know if you would like more information on healthy oils to eat. Nuts, seeds and their oils, and cold water, oily fish contain the ‘essential’ fatty acids the body cannot manufacture for itself.)

Proteins – to help the body repair itself and produce immune factors and other important substances.

Minerals, vitamins, anti-oxidants and phytonutrients – to provide the raw materials and enzymes to create all the substances the body needs to function properly. They can be found in most of the above substances but in much larger amounts in fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds and legumes. Herbs and spices contain many beneficial compounds. Eat as much raw food as you can to keep up your intake of natural vitamins and enzymes that are destroyed by cooking. Steam or lightly stir fry (adding a little water) so that you do not loose all the goodness into the cooking water. You can easily steam vegetables by using just ˝ to 1” of water in your pan, put a lid on top and when steam starts to escape from under the lid turn down to a low simmer till the food is cooked - much quicker than boiling, and much tastier. (You can do potatoes this way but add a little oil to the water so it doesn’t froth, and make sure it doesn’t boil dry.)

Many of the additives, preservatives, artificial hormones, pesticides and herbicides that now find their way into our foods disrupt the body’s finely tuned chemical reactions. Keep away from processed foods as much as possible, eat organic where you can and if you need to eat ready meals, look for the ones with no artificial preservatives, flavours or colourings, most supermarkets now have a range of meals without any additives. Keep away from mono-sodium glutamate (MSG) found in many processed foods and Chinese meals, and artificial sweeteners, as they are ‘exitotoxins’ which can damage the brain, sometimes irreversibly. (If you want a low calorie sweetener get some ‘Xylosweet’ from Higher Nature – a low glycaemic index sugar that is also good for the teeth.

Please e-mail me if you would like Microsoft Word file containing this article (plus info on healthy oils and the exercise programme, if you would like to print them out .

Ruth Horrocks Diploma in Naturopathy ruth.horrocks@athertondancecentre.co.uk

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