Lifestyle Choices

It is easy to adapt all of the recipes and meal plans. Here are some simple suggestions for making the recipes vegetarian:

• Replace the meat or fish in a recipe with Portobello mushrooms or aubergine, but remember that this will raise the carbohydrate levels in the recipe. You will also need to take extra whey-protein drinks and maybe increase your intake of nuts and high protein snacks to keep your protein levels high enough.

• Cook with tofu instead of the meat or fish. However, tofu has a quarter as much protein per gram as meat and a third as much as most fish. This means that not only should you replace the meat or fish in a recipe with a higher amount of tofu, but you should also add whey-protein powder to the recipe or supplement your meal with a whey-protein shake.

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Let’s Look at Food Combining

First developed by Dr. William Howard Hay, the theory behind careful food combining is simple: don’t mix protein or acid fruits with carbohydrates at the same meal. If your enzyme system is not as good as it should be, eating concentrated proteins and starches at the same meal can play havoc with digestion, increasing the number of incompletely broken down food particles that find their way into the bloodstream to cause trouble. Concentrated proteins such as cheese, eggs, fish, and meat need an acid medium for digestion. If there are any concentrated starch or sugar foods in the stomach at the same time this can interfere with or even neutralize the acid medium so that the proteins are incompletely digested. (more…)

1. Iron helps form haemoglobin, the oxygen carrying red pigment in your blood. It also aids protein metabolism and is essential for brain development and growth. It is found in meat, seafood, poultry, whole grains, beans, peas and dark-green leafy vegetables like spinach.

Ninety per cent of all iron used is recycled because it is so well conserved in the body. This means that you don’t have to keep replacing it all the time. This, of course, calls into question the widespread use of iron supplementation. Iron overload (hemochromatosis) is the most common inherited disease. When excess iron is present, the body’s immune system becomes severely compromised. Vitamin E helps protect against iron-generated free radical damage. So a high-quality antioxidant would be beneficial for balance if you have excess iron levels. (more…)

There are different types of tofu, primarily distinguished from one another by their texture. Silken tofu, or Japanese-style tofu, ranges from the softest to medium-soft. Chinese-style, or hard-pressed tofu, is medium-firm to dense-firm.

The medium-firm tofu is good for slicing, freezing, and cubing. The softer form may be used the same way but it has to be drained and squeezed dry, and it does not hold its shape as well. It is best in recipes that require blending, such as mayonnaise and cheesecake. You can make tofu firmer by placing paper towels on the top and bottom of the tofu and placing a heavy chopping board on it for fifteen minutes or longer. (more…)