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Month: May 2015
10 Devastating Effects of Eating Wheat and How to Lose Weight
I consider myself a normal guy, eating fairly healthy foods and watching my weight, exercising, drinking plenty of water and just generally being mindful of my body and what goes into it. I am not obsessed with it and don’t mind if I put on a few pounds every now and again.
Now that I am getting a little older I find it more difficult to keep the weight off if I stray from a ‘healthy’ diet, and healthy for me is wholemeal bread instead of white bread, more vegetables, more fruit, and more water. I am a huge advocate of drinking more water which you can read about in How to Lose 10 Pounds in Ten Days .
The trouble is, I love pasta, I love my wholemeal bread sandwiches, I love dunking a digestive biscuit in my coffee. Well, over the last year or so I started to notice that I would sneeze every time I ate a bread roll, or ate a digestive biscuit, but really thought nothing of it, until I started doing a little experiment. For 1 month I would cut out pasta, bread and biscuits from my diet. Sure enough I would lose a few pounds and feel a lot healthier, no more bloated feeling, no more feeling sluggish, or tired. Then when I started eating them again, I would feel bloated, put on weight, feel mentally sluggish and tired. So I decided I need to stop eating those types of food, my body was telling me to, but why?
Then after doing more research I found out why.
in a word ‘Wheat’
Here is what I found, which is backed up by research, and I mean a lot of research, not just a few reports, but by thousands of studies across 5 decades.
10 Devastating Effects of Eating Wheat Based Foods
Here are 10 Reasons not to eat wheat taken from Dr William Davis Blog WheatBellyBlog:
There are plenty of reasons to never allow your lips to meet a wheat bagel, sandwich, or pretzels again. But here are the top 10 most compelling, powerful reasons to tell the USDA and other providers of dietary advice to bug off with their “healthy whole grains” advice.
- Gliadin derived opiates (from partial digestion to 4- and 5-amino acid long fragments) increase appetite substantially–as do related proteins from rye, barley, and corn. This is a big part of the reason grains make you gain weight.
- Gliadin derived opiates are mind active drugs that trigger behavioral outbursts in kids with ADHD and autism, mania in bipolar illness, paranoia in schizophrenics, 24 hour a day food obsessions in people prone to bulimia and binge eating disorder.
- Gliadin, when intact, initiates the processes of autoimmunity leading to rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, and 200 other conditions.
- Amylopectin A raises blood sugar to high levels, higher, ounce for ounce, than table sugar.
- Wheat germ agglutinin is a potent bowel toxin.
- Wheat germ agglutinin blocks gallbladder and pancreatic function (via blocking the receptor for cholecystokinin).
- Phytates block absorption of all positively-charged minerals–such as iron, zinc, and magnesium
- Multiple allergens are present–such as trypsin inhibitors, thioreductases, alpha amylase inhibitors, and gamma gliadins, responsible for asthma, skin rashes, and gastrointestinal distress.
- Grains are potent endocrine disrupters explaining why women with polycystic ovarian syndrome, PCOS, are much worse with grain consumption, why men grow man breasts, why male levels of testosterone drop and estrogen increases, why pituitary prolactin levels are higher, why cortisol action is blocked, and why thyroid health is disrupted by autoimmune inflammation.
- Big Food and agribusiness use wheat and grains to control human buying behavior, putting the addictive appetite-stimulating effects to use to increase food consumption and keep you coming back for more.
What the hell does all of the above mean?
Well, eating wheat and grains is just not healthy despite what we’ve been told by our governments about a healthy eating plan. We are perhaps at epidemic levels of obesity around the world and the problem is getting worse, and one of the worst culprits of this epidemic is wheat.
Consider this list of potential side effects of eating wheat:
- Various cancers including: pancreatic, colon, stomach and lymphoma
- Autoimmune diseases like Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis
- Infertility
- Diabetes
- Obesity
- Arthritis
- Autism
- Depression, Anxiety and Schizophrenia
- Allergies
You mean I have to stop eating pasta, bread, pastries, desserts, rolls, crackers, and other grain based foods?
You don’t have to, the better way to think about it is to experiment. We are told every day what foods are bad for us, and it seems as if there’s no foods that we can actually eat that are good for us. So what I would do is a 30 day wheat and grain food fast and see how you feel. If you see and feel noticable results then you’ll know, first hand, that the research is true. If you don’t see and feel any difference then go back to what you were doing before and eating what you want.
Research is all well and good, but without experiencing first hand how this affects you, then it doesn’t really mean anything.
Here is a great video by Dr. William Davis, Author of : Wheat Belly
The post 10 Devastating Effects of Eating Wheat and How to Lose Weight appeared first on Change your thoughts.
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Twenty-Three 02 by foundry12
Twenty-Three 02 is a renovation project completed by foundry12. The home is located in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. Photos by: Jason Roehner
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House JC by MIRAG Arquitectura i Gestió
House JC is a private home located in Llavaneres, Spain. The 3,229-square-foot home was designed by MIRAG Arquitectura i Gestió in 2013. House JC by MIRAG Arquitectura i Gestió: “We firmly believe in a sustainable architecture that considers every client in every circumstance. This house shows the requirements of the location and its environment: the architecture results in the topographical and formal adjustments that are typical of the Mediterranean area…
7 Techniques To Boost Your Willpower
We start our New Year or Monday mornings off with good intentions – we are going to lose weight, stop smoking, organize our closets and train for that 5K. But by the end of the week your plastic bins for organizing are still in the trunk of your car, your new running shoes tossed in the back of the closet and you have chewed so much Nicorette you decide it’s cheaper to just start smoking again.
What happened to all those good intentions?
A common answer is, “Well I just lack willpower”. You are right – but not for the reasons we often attribute to ourselves, such as laziness or lack of desire to truly make a change.
There are two important things you should know about willpower:
- Willpower is a finite resource – meaning you can exhaust your supply. When we exert our effort in one area we have less willpower to focus on another.
- Willpower is like a muscle – it has to be strengthened.
Why is willpower important?
Willpower makes what you want to happen, happen. Willpower staves off the lack of self-control which can lead to bad habits, addictions, conflict with relationships and your work, etc. Willpower helps overcome inertia. When we see ourselves as lacking willpower and failing at our intentions our self-respect plummets and we then do nothing or we replace action with fantasy. (One day when I lose those 30 pounds…)
Let’s talk first about willpower and its finiteness nature. I will use a personal example here. When I have had a tough mental day at work the last thing I want to do is come home and think about anything. I am exhausted. I am sure you have experienced that mental exhaustion as well. I am too tried to think about dinner, even though I am starving. My brain is basically refusing to think anymore so I look at the easy options for dinner. A drive-thru or binging on that box of Moose Tracks ice cream I have in my freezer. This is a perfect example of using up all my willpower (at work) so that when I have another area I need to focus on (dinner) I can’t.
Next willpower is a muscle that you can exhaust just like lifting weights to the point of muscle failure. Researchers at the University of Hamilton in Ontario discovered that in just the same way we can exhaust a muscle (and therefore temporarily weaken it) the same thing happens to our willpower.
It’s important to understand that willpower is very similar to physical strength in that:
- Willpower is a mind-body response, not merely a mindset
- Willpower is limited (just like muscle power)
- Willpower is trainable (just like muscle power)
How can you train and strengthened your willpower to maximize its capacity? I have seven tactics that will help you do just that.
Be careful how and where you spend your willpower. New Year’s resolutions are the time we typically go gangbusters. Gym memberships are bought, work-out clothes purchased and we head off to the gym with our good intentions in tow. We work out for 45 minutes, are exhausted and head home to ravage our fridge. We repeat this cycle for maybe a couple of weeks before we give up all together. Don’t do that. Instead do this:
Start small. In my breaking bad habits webinar I emphasize, several times, the need to build up to the level we want to achieve. I ran a half-marathon. Do you think I woke up one day and said, “Hey I am going to run 13.1 miles today?” No – I had been running for a year and a half and training for about three months. Start small means if you want to develop strength and can’t do 50 pushups, do one. Then when you have conquered one, do three pushups and so on.
I know what you are saying. “One pushup! What good will that do me?” What good will exhausting yourself and quitting all together do? Not much right? So start small.
Control your exposure to those who suck the life right out of you. In fact, get them out of your life completely, if you can. Using your capacity to deal with individuals who try to drag you down into their drama or neurosis depletes your strength.
Make a plan. If you use all your willpower up and it’s dinner time we tend to binge on all the wrong foods. When you know you have a lot of work that’s going to take up tons of your mental energy, find a way to schedule in 10 minutes walks or 5 minutes of meditation or deep breathing.
Eat food that is good for you. Exerting willpower lowers your blood glucose levels. Since glucose is the same fuel that powers your muscles, using willpower literally fatigues the body. Research shows we can up our willpower by taking a big old gulp of sugar but that leads to the infamous sugar crash. Limit or better yet, remove insulin-raising carbohydrates and sugary foods from your diet. You’ll find that when you do exert willpower, you’ll lose less glucose.
Find your core values. When we have a path we are on it’s easier to stay there if we know that what we are doing at that moment is a core value. When you determine what your core values are then you are less likely to act on impulse. When we do things impulsively we stop thinking and start acting on emotionally driven instincts. I work with women all the time who tell me they know what their core values are. However, when we go through my exercise of finding them and figuring out just how much a part of their life their values really are, they are always surprised to find the exercise harder than they expected.
Stop being a perfectionist. When you think something has to be completely perfect or it’s a failure you use up so much willpower. You are depleting your resources trying to control things you can’t possibly control. Life is beautiful that way. You never know what the next second will bring. Stop trying to control life and just enjoy it.
Boosting your willpower is a combination of knowing that you can deplete your willpower but you can also strengthen and train your willpower using the seven tips outlined here. Just as with most things in life, being able to use the full capacity of your willpower to accomplish your goals is a process.
Shelly Drymon – a Damsel no longer in distress has gone through her own amazing transformation. She is the founder of The Rescue Yourself Project – where she helps women in mid-life transitions pursue their passion and purpose and to be their own knights in shining armor. You can read her story on her website – The Rescue Yourself Project. You can also pick up her free gift – “7 Days To An Inspired Life.”
The post 7 Techniques To Boost Your Willpower appeared first on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement.
To Catch A Breeze by HYLA Architects
To Catch A Breeze is a residential project completed by HYLA Architects in 2014. The 3,595-square-foot home is located in Singapore. To Catch A Breeze by HYLA Architects: “This 3-storey intermediate terrace house has a unique rotating screen on its front elevation. Its cross section has an aerodynamic boomerang shape that serves to deflect wind on one side. On the other side the screen is cladded with timber to give..
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Sig Nordal 