Recent news that eating a Mediterranean diet during pregnancy might ward off childhood allergies and asthma just adds to the list of studies suggesting this style of eating has a lot to offer.

Living longer, lower risks of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and possibly birth defects have all been linked to eating a Mediterranean Diet.

But is it easy to follow, especially given that the traditional way of eating in many Mediterranean countries – like everywhere else – is now under threat from faster lifestyles and faster more refined foods? Yes, says Dr Antigone Kouris, a Melbourne-based dietician and nutrition research fellow with Monash University, whose own background is Greek.

While she’s the first to agree that the traditional diet back in Greece is becoming more westernised, she believes that many principles of a Mediterranean diet can be easily adopted in Australia. Here are some good habits to borrow.

• Eat legumes. They’re common throughout Mediterranean countries and in a traditional Greek diet are eaten twice a week to avoid eating meat for religious reasons, says Kouris, herself part of a research team at Monash University that found legumes to be the most important food contributing to longevity in over 1000 elderly people in five countries.
• Eat lots of dark green leafy vegetables like spinach, rocket, endive, chicory and amaranth (excellent sources of magnesium and plant omega- 3 fats, she says). You’ll sometimes find amaranth – often called Chinese spinach – displayed with Asian veg in some greengrocers.
• Eat a range of coloured vegetables including tomatoes and capsicum – they’re high in antioxidants, including lycopene.
• Use extra virgin olive oil. There’s some evidence, says Kouris, that olive oil, like omega-3 fats, don’t seem to add weight around the waist as much as animal fats and processed (hydrogenated) vegetable fats that are high in saturated and trans fats.
• Include some fermented foods like yoghurt or fetta cheese that may help provide gut-friendly bacteria.
• Slow cook meats with vegetables, including tomato, garlic, onion and olive oil. This slow cooking of meat is less likely than grilling to form carcinogens, she says. Stewing also retains nutrients in vegetables.
• Eat fish and seafood. Traditionally, fish is eaten more often than animal meats, she says.
• Be generous with herbs like oregano, rosemary, dill and mint; they make vegetables taste great so you want to eat more of them. Indeed, “you don’t hear Greeks saying they hate vegetables,” says Kouris.
• Snack on nuts and seeds. Traditional snacks include pumpkin seeds, roasted chickpeas, almonds, walnuts, as well as dried and fresh fruit.
• Think outside the salad dressing and use vinegar as flavouring for other dishes. Besides adding a tangy flavour, says Kouris, it also lowers the GI (Glycemic Index) of foods and helps you absorb more iron.
  Author: Paula Goodyer

Whether you’re for or against diets, unless you really go out of your way to bend the rules, you will see some sort of result for all your pain and discomfort. If there is a positive outcome, no matter how small, those who have had to put up with your short temper and changeable moods will be mighty relieved.

Going on a diet gives your body a bit of a shock. It has got used to the daily excess of calories and knows that it’s not going to get stressed taking exercise because you don’t do any. When all of a sudden you decide to go on a diet and move yourself a little more than usual, it comes as a bit of a rude awakening.

Depriving your body of the calories sends out a signal that it interprets as there is going to be a shortage of food. It may not be life threatening, but the level of change in your daily calorie intake causes it to go into protection mode. It closes down and stores whatever energy it can. It makes you hungry so that you go and find more to eat. All this is why you feel lousy on a diet.

Having lost a few pounds in the first flush of your diet, your body’s metabolism starts to slow down. This effectively means that you become less efficient at burning calories.

This is our body’s built-in survival instinct. You could take in more calories, but then again your metabolism might still be slow and you’ll end up with more fat than before.

This is the time when you begin to lose hope. You bin the scales, not believing what they’re saying. You question the wisdom of going on a diet in the first place. It all gets very depressing indeed.

What you’re experiencing is your body working against you. It doesn’t like you disturbing its natural rhythms, its balance, its homeostasis – whether it’s right or wrong.

The secret is actually not to go on a diet at all. What you need to be thinking about is changing your behaviors. Examine them and find out which ones made you overweight in the first place. Then you need to learn new habits – slim habits.

Author: Henry John is a well known speaker, author and commentator on diet, health problems and behavior change.

Worrying about their bodies is no longer exclusive to women.  It seems that men are becoming just as concerned and increasingly aware of their weight and overall looks as women.

Eating disorder expert Dr. John Morgan, the head of the Yorkshire Centre for Eating Disorders, says that many young men suffer “extreme distress” over the appearance of their body.

The preliminary results of his research, which was carried out on male students aged 18 to 25 at Surrey University and is due for publication next year, found that one in five worry about their physiques.

For every man with an eating disorder, another ten desperately want to change the way they look. “One in five men have some degree of quite extreme distress,” he says.

A study conducted by ICM for Norwich Union in 2006, found that 36 per cent of men exaggerated how much weight they could lift in a gym. Also, one of every five men lied about his own body weight.  This behavior was once considered solely a female preserve.  Read more

Movie stars, celebrities and super models always look fabulous. It doesn’t matter if they appear in television extravaganzas or movie films or strut their stuff along the red carpet for opening movie premiers and  Academy awards, they always amaze us with larger than life presence.

In fact it takes an extraordinary degree of effort in order for them to appear so glamorous. The larger than life public show pieces that they present, they cannot slack off taking care of their physical presentation.

Accordingly, it is not surprising that the stars possess their own secrets in all matters relating to remaining fit and gorgeous. Health agenda regimes can range from daily extreme physical workouts to well-planned and designed menus and meals. Wouldn’t we all give a lot to be privy to the secrets of the stars in remaining beautiful and  sexy? Here’s a glimmer of the diet secrets of seven women stars and celebrities.

Celebrities livelihood’s depend enormously on their public persona. In addition to their clothes, gorgeous hair styles plus their makeup, celebrities must lavishly take good care of their number one asset….their bodies.

Check out the diet secrets of the following famous celebrities: Jennifer Aniston, Christie Brinkley, Kate Hudson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Madonna, Claudia Schiffer, Oprah Winfrey  Full article

The World Cancer Research Fund just released its findings based on reviewing 7,000 studies related to exercise, diet, weight and cancer.   Nine teams of scientists conducted over five years of study to produce the report.

Dr. Walter Willett, a nutrition expert, says, “We need to think about cancer as the product of many long-term influences, not as something that just happens.”

Much of the report’s findings are well established recommendations, such as watching what we eat, getting plenty of exercise and rest.  The key is how all the factors integrate together and the collective effect on cancer. Full article