You eat when you are happy and you also eat when you are feeling low. Food seems like the most obvious distraction from the daily woes. Most of us have almost lost our ability to tell when we are hungry and when we are content. Overeating has become a phenomenal problem, especially in America where the portion sizes grow faster than our waistlines.

Needless to say, all those calories that you unnecessarily intake, manifest into pounds of fat and get stored around your belly. Although, the causes of overeating are myriad, the binging pattern is the same.

If you suffer from the problem of compulsive overeating disorder and wish to know about how to control overeating, then this article is for you. Given below are some tips on how to stop overeating.

5 Tips to Help You Stop Overeating

1. Know When to Stop

The temptation or craving for food often urges you to eat more than required. You fail to notice the signals that your stomach send to indicate that it is full. Normally, it takes about 12 minutes for the brain to receive the signals of food satisfaction. However, in an obese person, this time is about 20 minutes. As a result, you keep on gorging even when your stomach has long before attained its capacity. The feeling of stuffiness in your stomach is very uncomfortable. However, if you keep on hogging, you eventually become used to this feeling. Hence, it is important to know when your stomach has reached its capacity.

2. Eat Slowly & Chew More

When you eat really fast, you clear your plate within a few minutes, only to be replenished again. You don’t realize the amount of food that you consume within short duration. Hence, it is always best to eat slowly and chew your food throughly. Eating at a slower pace helps you to realize when you are full and content with not eating any more food. Also, chewing your food throughly can help improve the digestion process.

3. Do Not Get Distracted

Eating while watching television or driving does not allow you to focus solely on your food. As a result, you don’t realize the amount of food that you are stuffing your stomach with. Similarly, do not use food as a distraction while staying up at night or while working at a computer. When you eat, you need to concentrate on your food alone. Not only does it help in cutting down on your excess intake, but also results in better assimilation of food. If you want to know how to stop overeating at night or any other time in the day, then reading this article on suppress hunger might help you.

4. Drink Lost of Purified Water

Often, your body fails to distinguish between the signals of thirst and hunger pangs. As a result, you are likely to take thirst signals for hunger pangs and eat immodestly. Hence, it is necessary to regularly drink water, so that you keep your body well hydrated which prevents it form sending mixed signals. Drinking sips of water between meals is a great solution, if you want to know ‘how to stop overeating at dinner.’

5. Choose the Right Food

This is your ultimate solution to overeating. You are less likely to face health hazards due to overeating carrot sticks than due to overeating potato chips. Hence, whenever you feel an irresistible urge to eat, you may try switching to healthier versions of food. This is particularly true when your overeating is due to boredom or easy access to food.

If your overeating is due to some psychological condition, then addressing that issue first can eventually cure the problem of overeating. Treating the cause of overeating is your answer to ‘how to stop overeating’.

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Article written by: A. Kulkarni

source

Almond milk is a popular beverage in Medieval Europe and the Middle East. It has been proven to have many health benefits for those who are lactose intolerant. Here’s a simple guide to making your own almond milk at home.

Homemade Almond Milk Recipe

Ingredients Needed:

• Raw almonds, 1½ cups
• Filtered water, 4 cups

Soak almonds in water for minimum six to eight hours. Drain the water, and blend the almond with 4 cups of water, until it reaches a milk like consistency. Strain it to remove almond skin and granules. One can store almond milk in an air-tight jar in the refrigerator for four to five days. If you want it to be sweeter, then blend in a few soaked dates or add a small amount of agave nectar as well.

The Health Benefits of Almond Milk

Lactose Free — Lactose is the sugar found in cow’s milk. Many people are lactose intolerant, and consumption of milk causes abdominal discomfort, bloating and diarrhea. As almond milk is extracted from almonds, a nut, hence it’s plant derived and lactose free, and can be easily substituted everywhere where one might use cow’s milk which makes this one of the most important almond milk benefits. Soy milk and hemp milk are two more alternatives if you are lactose intolerant.

Homemade and Pure — As one can easily extract the milk at home without much effort, and also store it without using preservatives and additives, it would be right to say that consuming almond milk means to consume health, 100 percent!

It has already been proven that to increase milk production, cow’s are being injected with antibiotics and growth hormones. These unnatural additives can then lead to allergic reactions and toxic side effects in humans. In most extreme circumstances, these additives can even lead to the development of certain types of cancers.

Nutrition Packed — Almonds are protein rich, and full of vitamin E, magnesium, selenium, manganese, zinc, potassium, fiber, iron, phosphorus and calcium. Full of heart healthy flavonoids, almond milk helps lower LDL cholesterol and protect the heart. High levels of vitamin E, ensure powerful antioxidants in the body.

Antioxidants inhibit the growth of free radicals that are known to cause cancer. Almond milk contains many vital nutrients, unlike other milks, it doesn’t need to be fortified with vitamins and minerals. Almond milk is low in calories, contains no cholesterol and saturated fats, which helps make this nut milk very healthy and good for those trying to lose weight. Power packed with nutrients, almond milk will help you and your family stay fit and healthy.

A Word of Caution

Almond milk should not be substituted for breast milk. It does not provide the necessary adequate nourishment required for infant growth. For lactose intolerant babies, it would be best to consult your family doctor or a pediatrician on what would be best for your child.

Nuts like almonds also include goitrogens; this substance is known to suppress thyroid gland functioning by interfering with iodine uptake. The use of bitter almonds has also been cautioned against, as bitter almonds, when blended with water can release cyanide.

Buy good quality almonds, to not only extract its milk, but also for the many almond milk benefits. And if you don’t want to have it bland, add in some chocolate or vanilla flavor to create an instant yummy healthy drink!

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Eat Right for Your Metabolism includes easy, do-it-yourself methods of determining metabolism type along with meal ideas and recipes. Below is an excerpt from the book that you are welcome to reprint on your site at no charge. If you would like a copy of the book for review please let me know and I would be happy to send one.

Excerpt: The following is an excerpt from the book Eat Right for Your Metabolism

Milk Can Sabotage Your Diet

Another food recommended for its nutritional advantages without consideration for the harm it can cause is milk. Dr. Duane Alexander, director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, is quoted as saying, “Without including milk in the diet, it is nearly impossible to meet calcium needs.” Some medical authorities, concerned about the deficiency of calcium in the diets of young people, believe that drinking more milk is the solution.

A national survey revealed that only 13.5% of girls and 35.3%of boys between the ages of 12 and 19 consume the recommended amount of calcium for teenagers: 1,300 mg of calcium daily.

Teenagers may be short on calcium, but they need to satisfy their calcium requirements by eating calcium-rich foods rather than by drinking milk because milk puts them at risk for developing a serious, sometimes fatal health problem later on in life. Milk causes a spurt in growth by stimulating the release of the human growth hormone somatotropin. This increases the teenager’s chance of getting cancer as an adult if his or her milk-drinking habit causes growth above a certain height.

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and conducted at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the Harvard School of Public Health found that taller people in general were more likely to get both pancreatic and colon cancer.

Dr. Dominique Michaud, an investigator at the National Cancer Institute, states that this increase in cancer risk is related to exposure to the growth hormone in milk during adolescence. (This is the growth hormone that occurs naturally in milk, not the hormone added by dairy farmers to increase cows’ production of milk.)

With each generation in America and elsewhere growing taller than the previous one because of increased milk consumption, and therefore increasingly likely to get cancer — as well as diabetes and calcium-hardened tissues — it’s time that the human body’s calcium requirements were satisfied by eating foods that are high in calcium, such as yogurt, cheese, and root vegetables, rather than milk. (Yogurt and cheese, although made from milk, have been chemically altered by fermentation, so, unlike milk, they don’t stimulate the release of somatotropin, the human growth hormone.)

Not only should teenagers avoid drinking milk because of the health risks involved when they become adults but also because the processed milk available in supermarkets today won’t satisfy their calcium needs. Standard brands of milk produced by agribusinesses have been heated, for the purposes of extending their shelf life, to a temperature of 212 degrees Fahrenheit. Pasteurization at such high heat destroys the acidity in milk; without it calcium can’t be broken down, and undigested calcium can’t be absorbed and utilized by the cells.

Drinking commercially pasteurized milk not only fails to satisfy the body’s calcium requirements, but because undigested calcium particles are not assimilated, adults who drink as little as two glasses of milk a day risk a buildup of excessive levels of calcium in their bodies. Yet a recent revision in the guidelines of the U.S. government’s Food Pyramid, published on April 20, 2005, in the New York Times, ignores this information by recommending three cups of milk for adults daily, one more cup than it recommends for children. In adults who drink milk every day, the calcium is apt to be deposited in the wrong places, for example, in the reproductive organs, in the bile duct, or in the ureters, the ducts that convey urine from the kidneys to the bladder.

The well-known downside of drinking milk is that it induces the mucus-secreting glands to overproduce. Excessive amounts of mucus cause unfriendly germs to multiply faster because it’s a food they thrive on.

But far more dangerous to health than excess mucus is the elevation of blood insulin that the consumption of milk by adults causes. Excessive insulin in the blood makes glucose levels drop drastically. This gives rise to binge eating, which brings the blood sugar back up; however, because blood sugar goes too high, insulin again rises excessively and once again causes the blood sugar to plummet. These wild swings in blood sugar give rise to hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), and when the overproducing insulin glands stop working, the hypoglycemic individual becomes diabetic.

Elevated insulin levels have also been implicated in the development of cancer. Women with breast cancer who have high insulin levels are six times more likely to have
a recurrence.

The deficiency of a nutrient in the body is not always the result of a diet that is lacking in that particular nutrient. Calcium deficiency is a case in point. The body can be deficient in calcium even though the diet meets the calcium requirements if the individual lacks vitamin D or the mineral boron. Both are necessary for the absorption and utilization of calcium.

Vitamin D is found only in the fat in meat, milk products, and seafood. The low-fat diet, by depriving the body of vitamin D, could be responsible for the widespread calcium deficiency in teenagers. In a study published in The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 24 percent of the 307 teenagers tested had a severe deficiency of vitamin D, and 42 percent were slightly deficient in the vitamin.

The only way to overcome nutrient deficiencies is to eat the foods that are indicated for your metabolic type. The metabolically appropriate diet is geared toward normalizing mineral levels in the body and providing the fats and oils needed to assimilate minerals.

The danger to health caused by consuming large quantities of milk to overcome a calcium shortage make it clear that foods should not be evaluated solely on the basis of their nutrient values but also on what effect they have on long-term health.

Copyright © 2006 Felicia Drury Kliment

Author: Felicia Drury Kliment is a nutritional consultant in private practice and the author of the acclaimed book The Acid-Alkaline Balance Diet. Visit her website at www.EatRightForYourMetabolism.com.

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