Category: Healthy Weight

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Low Calorie Pasta for your Health

The Health Benefits of Pasta

Pasta is a perfect foundation for healthy, nutritious and satisfying meals: pasta is generally eaten with nutrient-dense food partners, such as fiber-filled vegetables and beans, heart healthy fish and monounsaturated oils, antioxidant-rich tomato sauce and protein-packed cheeses, poultry and lean meats. Pasta offers:

Sustained Energy

Carbohydrates like pasta provide glucose, the crucial fuel for your brain and muscles. Pasta is an excellent source of complex carbohydrates, which provide a slow release of energy. Unlike simple sugars that offer a quick, yet fleeting boost of energy, pasta helps sustain energy.

Low Sodium & Cholesterol Free

Pasta is very low in sodium and cholesterol-free. Per cup, enriched varieties provide a good source of several essential nutrients, including iron and several B-vitamins. Whole wheat pasta can provide up to 25% of daily fiber requirements in every one cup portion.

Folic Acid

Enriched pasta is fortified with folic acid – essential for women of child-bearing age. FDA regulations require enriched grain products to contain this important vitamin. A serving of dry pasta supplies the equivalent of roughly 100 micrograms of folic acid, or 25% of the recommended daily intake.

Balanced Diet

Pasta is part of a well-balanced diet. Current dietary guidance calls for up to 65% of daily calories to come from carbohydrates, such as pasta.

Low GI

Pasta has a low Glycemic Index (GI) so it does not cause blood glucose levels to rise quickly. Blood glucose is sometimes referred to as blood “sugar”.

Healthy Weight Program

Pasta is a fat-free, low sodium food that can fit right in with your weight loss plan. One cup of cooked pasta contains just 200 calories, in addition to valuable vitamins and minerals. It also fills you up so you don’t feel hungry while trying to lose weight! Watch out for the sauce which can add weight.

More Reason to eat Pasta

Besides being delicious, we know that pasta has plenty of health benefits like providing folic acid, being cholesterol free, and sustaining energy. As if those weren’t enough reasons to eat pasta, WebMD recently listed 14 more reasons why you should eat pasta! Pasta is part of a good diet – it provides energy and is great for adding other health foods.

  • It keeps you fuller longer. As a filling dish, you won’t be quick to follow your pasta meal with unhealthy foods.
  • It’s affordable – because it has cheap ingredients, pasta is consistently an affordable meal.
  • Pasta is versatile. You can have it as an appetizer, side dish, or the main meal. It can also come as a salad or can be used for breakfast or even dessert!
  • It’s a simple meal to make. Even the most beginner cooks can make pasta. It also comes with easy cleanup!
  • With so many different shapes, there are countless possibilities for pairing pastas. You can have lots of fun switching shapes for different recipes.
  • Whole grain pasta has added health benefits like protecting against stomach and colon cancers.
  • It can help you lose weight. As shown in a recent study, people who ate pasta as part of the Mediterranean Diet lost more body fat than those who did not.
  • Pasta is low in sodium. Many foods high in salt content can lead to heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes.
  • It’s low in fat. Pasta by itself has just slightly more than half a gram of fat per serving.
  • Pasta can help keep blood sugar regulated due to its low glycemic index. This can also help prevent diabetes and obesity.
  • Pasta stays good for a very long time. Both dry and frozen pastas have shelf life of several months.
  • Pasta can be gluten-free so those with gluten sensitivities don’t have to miss out!
  • Pasta can even be eaten for dessert!
James O'Sullivan - that's me, a people friendly practitioner and lecturer of Integrated Medicine, serving my patients, my students and the public with the positive benefits of both Conventional Western Medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine.
It's a wonderful life
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to diagnose or assess. The information provided is not to be considered a substitute for consultation with a qualified health care practitioner.
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5 Simple Tips to a Healthy Weight

Chinese Medicine Helps Achieve a Healthy Weight

Traditional Chinese Medicine, dates back over 5000 years. Today, it is just as valid and useful in helping us achieve our health goals, and can help your journey towards a healthy weight.

There are many medical research studies into the efficacy of Traditional Chinese Medicine for a healthy weight, and especially in weight loss suggests that its approach can inhibit the production of body fat, improve intestinal peristalsis to increase bowel movement, boost blood circulation, and speed up the metabolism. Herbal medicine, Acupuncture and Tuina Acupressure each play a key role in this endeavour, but here are five things you can do on your own to support your weight loss efforts.

Eat more Bitter foods.

I recommend replacing sweet and starch foods with eating bitter foods. Bitter is one of the five flavours in Traditional Chinese Medicine. The Five are bitter, spicy/pungent, sweet, salty, and sour/astringent. It is one of the main flavours that help with weight loss because bitter tastes are difficult to overeat and help to purge the bowels, including flushing toxins from the body. Bitter flavours also increase digestive enzyme secretion, which improves our sense of satiety or feelings that we are full. Examples of bitter foods include cucumber, bitter melon, asparagus, and some lettuces.

Promote the Smooth Flow of your Qi daily

Qi is the life-force or energy that nourishes all life in Chinese theory. Our Qi can become stagnant or blocked in the body leading to ‘dampness’ or build ups or mucus or water retention. It is important to move Qi to clear stagnation and improve normal metabolic processes. Qi can be encouraged to flow freely with exercise. It’s not really important which exercise you do, as a 30-minute brisk walk moving the hands as well as the feet, will achieve the smooth flow of Qi in the body. Taichi, TaiQi, Qi Gong, Yoga and certain breath work can also help. Herbs can greatly improve the flow of Qi, as well as nourish certain body functions of metabolising food. Acupuncture can help also.

A Powerful Herbal Homeopathic Remedy

Chinese herbalists believe that extra weight is due to undigested food, retained fluids, and a stagnant metabolism. Homeopathic remedies are formulated from these precious herbs “Jian Mei Ling Qiao” to strengthen and nourish the digestive and elimination systems, while increasing metabolic efficiency. Metabolism and a Healthy Weight.

Balance your Water Consumption

Traditional Chinese Medicine advises to drink 1 litre of warm water early in the morning as it helps to prime the system, flush the bowels, and reawaken the metabolic processes. It further suggests to drink a further 3 litres of warm water over the rest of the day.

Traditional Chinese Medicine cautions against eating cold foods or drinking cold water, as it causes the digestive process to slow down, while your body uses vital energy to warm the food and water for metabolism, which can lead to stagnation.

Acupuncture

Acupuncture is one of the go-to treatment that modern Chinese people have in order to obtain a Healthy Weight by balancing metabolism and eliminating excess residue in the body. Learn more about acupuncture here.

A Cleansing Detox.

Toxins are all around us – but did you know you can naturally cleanse your body through food? Practiced for centuries by cultures around the world — including Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine systems — cleansing and detoxification is about resting, cleansing and nourishing the body from the inside out. By removing and eliminating toxins, then feeding your body with healthy nutrients, detoxifying can help protect you from disease and renew your ability to maintain optimum health through a range of methods including yoga, meditation and more.

There are so many acupoints located on the body, and your therapist will advise you to stimulate certain points daily to improve digestion and promote the smooth flow of energy.

There is an area located on the tiny triangle (or diamond) of cartilage that’s in front of the entrance to the ear canal are two powerful points for reducing appetite. Pinch that bit of cartilage intermittently for 30-90 seconds starting about 10-20 minutes before meals, or whenever you feel uncharacteristically hungry to prevent overeating. You can pinch either or both ears.

Incorporate these principles into your healthy lifestyle and you’ll be well on your way to achieving your goal weight.

James O'Sullivan - that's me, a people friendly practitioner and lecturer of Integrated Medicine, serving my patients, my students and the public with the positive benefits of both Conventional Western Medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine. It's a wonderful life
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to diagnose or assess. The information provided is not to be considered a substitute for consultation with a qualified health care practitioner.
Please share! Help the word get out. Pin the graphic too.