Lifestyle Choices

Vacuum cleaner: Don’t bang it about, it’s a sensitive machine and not magic. Pick up hairgrips or pins by hand because they might damage the engine. Empty the bag before it’s full. Service it regularly, because repairs are expensive, and stop using it if you suspect that it’s faulty.

There are basically three types of vacuum cleaner:

1. A hand-held, heavy upright model, which will be necessary for acres of carpet.
2. A small upright model, light enough to carry upstairs (even if you currently have a flat, people move house on average once every eight years).
3. A cylinder model, easily stored, for small areas and stairs, with special attachments for curtains and upholstery. (more…)

I took my first unconscious step towards female emancipation and away from martyrdom when I decided that, instead of teaching the au pair girl to cook for the children, it might be a better investment of time to teach the children to cook for the au pair. After all, I don’t change the children every year. For the first time they always ate what was put before them and they eventually asked to do the shopping, a task which they performed far more frugally than I.

The next step was to find a new job for the au pair, and to invest the money saved on wages in anti-drudge machines. One was the fridge-freezer, the other was the dishwasher, and any working woman with a family could regard these as business investments to offset against her wages in the family budget. The cost of both machines was equivalent to the au pair’s wages for eighteen months, not taking her keep into account. Furthermore, I’ll never have to do the freezer’s homework and the dishwasher is hardly likely to have an affair with my husband. (more…)

I’ve read a lot about women who serenely cope with the three roles of full-time working woman, wife, and mother. However, I’ve never actually met one. All the ones that I know feel inadequate.

Going back to work after having children is a practical and emotional problem and both are interdependent. You risk worrying about them when you’re at work and about work when you’re at home, and end up being happy in neither situation.

Two requisites for a working mother are stamina and an understanding family Sympathetic they may be until it comes to your interests versus theirs, but they still want their evening meal on time and they don’t want to hear about the bus queue which made you late. (more…)

There are obvious disadvantages to a child in having a working mother but there are less obvious advantages. Children with working mothers certainly don’t suffer from smother-love — over-fussing. They learn to be realistic, independent, responsible and sometimes stoical, no mean preparation for the toughness of life.

Your children risk having a mother who’s not permanently on tap for them but who is likely to have a younger outlook and be more tolerant and open to new ideas (although I did hear myself saying to my older son during that craze, `I don’t know how you can walk on those high heels’). (more…)

Training: If you have had training you can probably find job opportunities through your professional body or through reading or advertising in your professional journal.

Assuming that you haven’t had any training prior to marriage and aren’t coping with pre-school age children, what is available? Most women are unskilled. Only 6 per cent receive any further training when they leave school. However, there are suitable training courses for `mature students’, the official description of any woman over twenty- three. You can exploit a talent which you already possess and are practising in your home (sewing or cooking) or be trained by a firm who wishes to employ you, or at one of the many courses at a local technical college. Generally what is difficult to acquire isn’t really the training, or even the job, but the determination to forget embarrassment, laziness or shyness — and go out and get it. (more…)

Make your own decisions: Althoughspecialists may be useful to analyse asituation and suggest solutions, theycannot run your life for you. Onceyour choices are clarified, use yourcommon sense to make your owndecisions. Then force yourself to bepessimistic, to look for the snags inthe arrangements and face them.

Don’t opt out because you don’tunderstand your position. Make your adviser explain it all again until s you do understand it, and so can be b responsible for deciding which path e you want to take. Be prepared to be f responsible for your own decisions. y Life is a risk. Nothing is certain inthis world and there is no guaranteed le security, financial, intellectual or d emotional. Security lies in your own st self-reliance to deal with the problems of life. You will make some right decisions and some wrong ones. Pay the penalty for the wrong ones, cut your losses and start again. (more…)

First, take a good look at yourself (body, soul and inside skull). Decide what areas could stand a little pleasant improvement. Decide what your life lacks. New friends? Less weight? More fun? Once you’ve decided what you want, stand up, take a deep breath, and S TART.

What you can do inside your home

Make yourself more beautiful: This is basically taking better care of yourself, encouraging healthy narcissism, learning to love and take care of your body, condition your skin and hair. Learn to relax. Take care of yourclothes. (more…)

Behavioral psychologists begin with the notion that eating behavior is learned and maintained as a result of interaction between you and your environment. And their definition of environment includes everything around you—people, events, things you see and respond to. These psychologists are not very interested in deep-seated motives for compulsive eating and they acknowledge that there is nothing you can do to change your genetic inheritance. But what you can do, they say, is to get to grips with overweight by looking at it as a voluntary disorder brought about by habit and environmental stimuli (remember how the habit of eating at certain times or the sight of food triggers hunger in overweight people). Change your environment, they say, and you will alter your habits and your eating patterns so you lose weight and keep it off. (more…)

Forget about counting kilojoules, but accept that they are not all equal. By now you know that unnecessary kilojoules gained from fat are the biggest contributors to your excess weight and detractors from your general well-being. You might as well also accept the fact that the enjoyment of fat-rich foods started off as a habit; one that perverted your taste buds to favour certain kinds of foods -the fatty kind, usually concocted into a fat feast with the addition of refined starch, sugar and/or salt. And I daresay, a habit that possibly grew into full-blown emotional dependence on the sensual comfort they provide – a dependence that hampers emotional growth in the long run and pushes you further into the vicious cycle of eating to feel better, only to wake up feeling worse.

But simply removing fat from the cooking process would mean removing a great deal of taste and juiciness as well. And you should also know that in the long run, bland and fat-free food could cause you to abandon your healthy eating plan. (more…)

The Dark, Mysterious Chypres

These scents, which make up the second-most-important family of perfumes, have tremendous tenacity and are said to have originated in Cyprus centuries ago from “eau de Chypre,” although that particular chypre differs tremendously from the modern chypres and hybrids. Chypres have rich, mossy undertones that are reminiscent of dark green woods after rain, luxurious ferns, and luscious fruits. Women who prefer scents in the chypre family and wear them often are attracted to their warm, sensuous aura, which lasts for hours. The chypres are subtle and seem continuously to unfold their secret loveliness as you wear them.

The chypre family is a large one, with many branches: The two most important are the fruity scents, which include those chypres with green and citrus overtones and the leathery chypres, which often also contain either patchouli or vetiver. (more…)

How should you cook in a healthy and conserving way and yet still be able to enjoy the results of your efforts? Consider in the first place whether the food, in fact, needs to be cooked for lengthy periods of time. A healthy diet depends to a large degree on foods that are as near to their natural state as possible, thus retaining their vitamin content and nutritional value.

Vegetables should be absolutely fresh, preferably young, and they should be prepared with the minimum of wastage. Fresh raw vegetables and fruit are highly nutritious and retain most of the minerals, vitamins, trace elements, and fibre often destroyed by cooking. They are also good for the teeth and digestion. You can eat the overwhelming majority of vegetables raw, after thorough preparation, which includes washing them thoroughly to remove any trace of possible pesticide residues. You should peel some vegetables, including commercially grown carrots, for the same reason. Raw root vegetables, potatoes apart, are excellent grated and have better, more distinct flavours than when cooked. Leaf and stem vegetables should always be perfectly fresh whether you intend to eat them raw or cook them, since the vitamin and mineral contents decline rapidly once they are harvested. (more…)

What is irradiation?

When a foodstuff is irradiated it moves along a conveyor belt into a central chamber where it is exposed briefly to gamma rays provided by an isotope of cobalt-60, a nuclear substance specially manufactured for the purpose. This brief bombardment of the food causes chemical and molecular changes that kill bacteria, moulds, micro-organisms, worms, grubs and other pests. In addition it stops sprouting in vegetables and delays the ripening process in fruit, greatly extendingthe shelf-life of these perishables.

A major advantage of irradiation is that during its application nothing is added to the product – irradition is a process, not an additive. (more…)

When discussing the effects of the study carried out in America, Keys and his colleagues said: ‘Food in all its ramifications became the principal topic of conversation, reading, and daydreams for almost all… subjects.’

The first change that became obvious for the women in my study was that they became preoccupied with food.

As women, in a society where we are expected to shop, cook and provide food for our families, food already plays a central role in our lives. It becomes a way to show love and affection to our dependants and a way to ask for love from those we are dependent on. If we provide dinner for our husbands when they come home from work (even if we ourselves have been working!) it shows that we appreciate that they have been working hard (and, it suggests, even harder than us) and that we recognise how much they do for us. Children learn from a very early age that eating their mother’s food makes her feel positive and valued. They also learn that to refuse her food is rejecting her love and will make her anxious and upset. We think about food in terms way beyond the limitations of feeling hungry and needing sustenance. (more…)

Breakfast smoothie

A complete meal in a glass, blended so that you can drink it justbefore rushing out of the door. Vary the fruit you use (although choose low-GL ones such as apples, peaches, oranges, plums and apricots, and keep within 10D per person) to keep it interesting and to get a range of different nutrients.

SERVES 1

1 tbsp seeds (such as linseeds, pumpkin, sunflower or sesame seeds) (optional)

150g (5¹/2oz) live, organic natural yogurt, or soya yogurt ¹/2 banana

1 punnet of berries, about 1 00g (31/2oz) (use frozen berries when fresh ones are out of season)

A little lemon or apple juice (if necessary) (more…)

Each of these breakfasts provides 10 GL to comply with the GL guidelines for main meals. They are designed to fill you up rather than fatten you. I f you lack inspiration or energy in the morning, the low-gl Get up and go is a great solution.

Porridge

Oats are full of soluble fibre for healthy digestion and release their energy very slowly to keep you filled up all the way through to your snack and lunchtime.

SERVES 1

35g (11/4oz) whole porridge oats

225ml 18fl oz) water (the guide is two parts water to one part oats)

1 tbsp seeds (such as any combination of pre-cracked linseeds, sunflower, sesame and pumpkin seeds)

A little xylitol to sweeten or a sprinkling of Solo or other low-sodium salt, to taste (optional)

1. Place the oats and water in a pan. Bring to the boil then gently simmer, stirring, until the porridge thickens and the oats soften.
2. Stir the seeds into the porridge and spoon into a bowl.
3. Sprinkle with xylitol or the salt, if using. (more…)

WEEK 3 AND BEYOND – ACHIEVING YOUR TARGETS

By days 16 to 21 you will begin to feel the benefits of being on the diet. Your skin will have a healthy glow, your clothes will start to fit better and you will be getting used to using and portion sizes. Most people by this stage are feeling so good that they are contemplating adopting the low-GL principles for life, not justfor three weeks.

DAY 1

Breakfast Breakfast smoothie

Lunch Chicken, sun-blush tomato and pine nut salad (more…)

The Low-GL Diet is all about freshness, variety, flavour and enjoyment. No foods are banned (although the quantities are limited) and there is scope for infinite variety. Adjusting to your new way of eating couldn’t be easier as the first three weeks of the diet are planned out for you day by day. The idea is to give you time to get used to the quantity and balance of foods on the diet. Once you’re familiar with the portion sizes and with the basic rules, you can adapt the recipes, create your own, or swap meals from one day to another.

WEEK 1 – GETTING STARTED

Days 1-7 are all about enthusiasm and getting started. Encourage yourself to achieve early successes by keeping strictly to the daily menus. There will be a few ingredients such as quinoa, miso soup and tahini that you may not be used to using every day — but enjoy the experimentation, and give yourself time to get used to new cooking methods and flavours. (more…)

Store-cupboard staples

These staple ingredients will ensure that you are always able to rustle up a low-GL meal at a moment’s notice.

• Low-GL Get Up & Go (a delicious smoothie mix that you blend with fruit.)
• Xylitol (a naturally sweet, low-carb sugar alternative that has 40 per cent fewer calories than sugar).
• Low-sodium salt, or sea salt (to be used in moderation). -*Black peppercorns.
• Marigold Reduced-salt Vegetable Bouillon powder.
• Whole organic rolled oats and oat flakes. (more…)

Keeping your GL low and your blood sugar level stable depends not only on what you eat but also on how you cook what you eat. Cooking encourages the carbohydrate in foods to be released faster. The longer you cook something and the higher the temperature, the faster the carbohydrate in the food is released. The best method is actually leaving the food raw, but steaming, boiling, poaching, steam-frying, waterless cooking, baking and grilling are all good, too, in that order. Avoid frying food as much as possible. Deep-fried foods are definitely to be avoided.

Steaming

The best way to cook green, leafy, less-starchy vegetables is to steam them, as this will preserve a lot of their vitamins, as well as enhance their flavour. The method can be used for most food, especially fish, but is less successful for starchy vegetables such as potatoes and parsnips, and is not ideal for red meat. (more…)

Dietary Recommendations: Fat

Total fat in the diet should be limited to 30 percent or less of the total calories consumed.

Saturated fat in the diet should be limited to 10 percent or less of total calories consumed.

Polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats should be substituted for saturated fat in the diet.

Dietary cholesterol should be limited to 250 to 300 milligrams per day. (more…)