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Healthy Eating for Life
Simple Tips and Ideas for Getting Started
Hunger vs Appetite
Water and Good Nutrition
Carbohydrates
Glycaemic Index
Fibre
Protein
Good Fats vs Bad Fats - How Much Fat?
The Energy Value of Nutrients

Healthy Eating for Life Good nutrition requires balance, moderation and variety in your food choices. It doesn’t mean you have to go hungry or miss out on great tasting food – the variety of fabulous tasting healthy foods that are available today is limitless! Once you know how to make the best food choices it will not only give you great pleasure, but it will also help you achieve and maintain your healthy weight for life. We have all heard it before but it has been shown that when you do eat a healthy diet, you feel better and have more energy. You also allow your body to function properly. >back to top<

Some simple tips and ideas for getting started with good nutrition:

“Free Foods”

To reduce hunger, help you manage the desire for snacks and boost your daily fibre level you can use your imagination to prepare a “guilt free” tasty snack or small meal to go with your shake. Use any combination of the following “free foods” at any time during the day:

Vegetables: - eaten on their own or made into a hot salad, cold salad or dry roasted:

tea or coffee with low fat milk and no sugar (use artificial sweetener as required)

Simple ways to start reducing your fat intake

• Avoid adding butter, margarine, oily salad dressing or mayonnaise to your food
• Avoid sausages, processed meats, pies, sausage rolls and pasties
• Trim visible fat from meat and take the skin off chicken, duck or turkey before cooking and buy leaner cuts of meat (that are at least 90% fat free)
• Eat white rather than red meat
• Drain fat off cooked mince and soups
• Swap to reduced fat or skim milk
• Minimise total cheese plus swap to low fat cheese
• Use vegetable stock rather than oil for cooking
• Snack on fresh fruit and vegetables rather than biscuits and chips
• Avoid foods with more than 10g of fat per 100g (equal to 10% fat) on their nutritional panel
• Watch out for low fat foods that are very high in sugar as the total energy that you are getting from that food could make your weight loss or weight maintenance harder
  

Simple ways to start increasing your fibre intake

• Eat 3 – 4 pieces of (different) fruit and 4 – 5 (different) vegetables per day
• Choose wholemeal or wholegrain bread, crumpets, muffins or scones
• Choose wholegrain pasta, brown rice, rolled oats and cereals
• Eat more dried peas, beans and lentils

Simple ways to avoid oversized portions of food

• Use small plates to serve home cooked meals - get used to seeing your meals as smaller on the plate, this way your hunger level will decrease to meet the amount of food served
• Have a meat portion about the size of the palm of your hand, 1 cup of cooked rice OR pasta OR mashed potato and fill the rest of your plate with vegetables and/or salad from the “free food” list.
• When you are eating out consciously try to reduce the portion size that you order and don’t order the side order of chips or wedges
• Avoid take-away food as much as possible and if you do have it don’t “super size” your order

Simple habits to help with your healthy eating

• Eat three meals each day and avoid additional snacks between meals
• Do not miss having (something for) breakfast
• Cut out fruit juices and drink water or low calorie soft drink rather than high sugar content soft drinks
• Watch out for low fat foods that are very high in sugar

Drink lots of water

• In addition to the water used to make the KicStart™ milkshake meal, drink at least an additional 2 litres of water each day

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Hunger vs Appetite

Biological hunger is the true physiological sensation in our body caused by the absolute NEED for food.

The hunger is genuinely physiological; it simply does not "go away" if you wait (eg. 15 minutes) before eating. It increases over time and alternative distractions will not reduce the craving

Emotional hunger or Appetite is the psychological desire or WANT for food or drink.

The hunger is psychological rather than physiological, it is likely to go away or decrease in intensity if you wait. It does not increase over time and alternative distractions can reduce the craving.

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Water and good nutrition

Water is one of the body's most essential nutrients, yet it is one that many people ignore. Our bodies are made up of 60% water (muscle tissue is about 72% water). If your water levels fall significantly below this, you enter into a state of dehydration. This can have serious effects on your health. The benefits of drinking enough water during a weight management program are enormous. It fills your stomach, acts as a natural appetite suppressant, quenches your thirst and is vital for flushing the wastes created by fat metabolism out your system. In addition to the water used to make the KicStart™ milkshake meal, drink at least an additional 2 litres of water each day. To ensure you are drinking the correct amount of water, measure 2 litres into your personal water bottle in the morning and drink it progressively during the day. By the end of the day, there should be no water left in the bottle!

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Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are usually the main source of energy for the human body. All carbohydrates are made up of single units of sugar (also called saccharide units). Carbohydrates that contain only one sugar unit (also called monosaccharides) or two sugar units (disaccharides) are often referred to as simple sugars. Two of the most common monosaccharides are glucose and fructose (the main sugar in most fruit). Glucose is the primary form of sugar stored in the human body for energy. These simple sugars are sweet in taste and are broken down quickly in the body to release energy. Carbohydrates that contain long chains of the single units of the simple sugars joined together are called complex carbohydrates. Starch is an example of a complex carbohydrate. Starch is used by plants to store glucose for later use as energy, plants high in starch include rice, beans, wheat, corn and potatoes.

When we eat starch the enzymes in our saliva and intestines break the links between the single glucose units and the sugar is absorbed into the bloodstream.

There are important differences in the way our body breaks down and absorbs the carbohydrates we eat. The Glycaemic Index (GI index), described below, provides a measure of how quickly the carbohydrate in the food we eat is broken down into glucose which is then absorbed in the bloodstream.

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Glycaemic Index

The GI is a marker showing the rate at which glucose is released into the bloodstream over a set period of time after food consumption. The GI scale rates each food against pure glucose - which has a rating of 100 (it doesn’t have to be broken down so it is absorbed the quickest). Foods that are high in GI (eg. over about 60) increase blood sugars quickly, but those that are low (eg. less than about 40) are more slowly digested and result in a slower rise in blood sugar. Foods that have a low GI may help control weight. This occurs by helping control food intake by increasing satiety ("feeling full"), decreasing total food intake and / or increasing our metabolic rate and energy expenditure. Glycaemic Index scores and classification for some well-known foods include:

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Fibre

Fibre is the nutrient in the diet that is not digested by our gastrointestinal enzymes. Dietary fibre is a vital part of a balanced diet and should be an essential part of all healthy eating plans. Fibre comes in two forms – Insoluble Fibre and Soluble Fibre – and most vegetables and fruits have some of both. While both types of fibre have benefits, soluble fibre is the form than can help reduce cholesterol levels in the blood. Fruit, vegetables, beans, peas, oats, barley and rye are all good sources of soluble fibre. Insoluble fibre acts like a sponge holding water and helps digested food move quickly through the gut. Insoluble fibre is sometimes referred to as roughage.

Some advantages of increasing fibre in the diet:

• More "filling" and therefore decreases total food intake
• Decreases constipation
• Reduces the risk of bowel cancer
• Leaves less room for fatty foods
• Improves food transit time in the bowel
• Can lower cholesterol and blood fats
• Is low in total energy

Simple ways of increasing fibre intake:

• Eat 3-4 pieces of (different) fruit each day
• Eat 4-5 (different) vegetables each day
• Eat the skins of fruit and vegetables where possible (eg. kiwi fruit, potatoes)
• Use wholemeal or wholegrain bread
• Choose wholegrain cereals (wholemeal pasta, brown rice, rolled oats, cereals)
• Try wholemeal crumpets, muffins, scones, raisin bread etc
• Eat more dried peas, beans and lentils

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Protein

Proteins are large complex molecules composed of hundreds or thousands of individual units called amino acids that are linked together to form long chains. Amino acids are often referred to as the “building blocks” of protein. There are 20 different amino acids which are combined in numerous different ways to make different proteins. Protein in our diets can be of animal or vegetable origin. Principal sources are: meat, fish, eggs, milk, cheese, cereals, nuts, peas, beans and lentils.

When we eat proteins they are broken down in our digestive tract and the individual amino acid units are absorbed into our bloodstream. These individual amino acids are then used by our bodies to make new proteins for various things such as enzymes, muscles, hair, nails and skin. There are an estimated 100,000 different proteins in the human body alone, and each of them is made up of a combination of different combinations of only 20 amino acids.

Of the 20 different amino acids that our bodies need 12 can be made from other amino acids; however, eight amino acids can’t be made by our bodies therefore they must be obtained from our food. These amino acids are called “essential amino acids”. Not all proteins contain the “essential amino acids”. Dietary proteins from animal sources (e.g. meat, fish, eggs, milk and cheese) are said to be 'complete' or of 'high biological value' because they contain significant amounts of all of the essential amino acids needed by our bodies.

Some proteins are very rapidly digested and absorbed (e.g. whey protein) which results in a quick release of amino acids into our blood which lasts for about 2 hours. Other proteins are significantly slower in their digestion and absorption (e.g. caseinate protein) and produce an initial conservative rise in amino acids in the bloodstream, however these levels are sustained for many hours.

Protein can also be used as an energy supply if the body does not have enough carbohydrate or fat to use as energy.

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Good fats vs bad fats - how much fat?

The terms "good fat” and “bad fat" refer to the potential for a particular fat to cause disease and not to how fattening it is. All fats have the same amount of kilojoules (or calories), but their chemical compositions are different. Fats are made up of chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms that are bonded together. The terms saturated fat and unsaturated fat refers to whether all the available spaces on all the carbon atoms are bonded to hydrogen atoms (saturated), or if there are spaces for additional hydrogen atoms (unsaturated).

The three forms of fat found in nature are:

Saturated Fats
These fats have all of their carbon atoms filled with or saturated with hydrogen.
Some common sources of saturated fat are high fat cuts of meat, butter, cheese, coconut oil and palm oil.
A diet high in saturated fat can cause a person's bad cholesterol (LDL) to rise and may increase the risk of developing certain types of cancer and heart disease.

Monounsaturated Fats
These fats have one space for an additional hydrogen atom (referred to as a double bond) between two carbon atoms.
Some common sources of monounsaturated fat are olive oil, canola oil, peanut oil, and most nuts. Monounsaturated fat does not cause cholesterol to increase. When a person substitutes monounsaturated fat for saturated fat, it helps to lower the bad cholesterol, and protects the good cholesterol (HDL) from going down.

Polyunsaturated Fats
These fats have more than one space for an additional hydrogen atom (ie. more than one double bond) between two carbon atoms.
The two major categories of polyunsaturated fats are Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids.
Omega-3 means there is a double bond in the third space from the end of the carbon chain and Omega-6 means there is a double bond in the sixth space from the end of the carbon chain.
Omega 3 and Omega 6 are called Essential Fatty Acids (EFA) because they perform vital functions in the body and our bodies can’t make them (so we must get them from the food that we eat). As such, sources of Omega-3 and Omega 6 must be included in the diet and a meal replacement program that does not provide these will result in a deficiency in the body.
Omega-3 plays an important role in the development, functioning and maintenance of the human brain, eyes and heart. Omega-3 also has a natural anti-inflammatory effect in the body, which may be beneficial in joint health and for a number of inflammatory disorders.
The best sources of Omega-3s are fatty fish, such as salmon, sardines, mackerel, herring, and rainbow trout, among others. Canola oil, walnuts, and flaxseed also contain some.

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The energy value of nutrients

*Fat is twice as dense as carbohydrate and protein, and is stored more readily by the body as fat than other nutrients.

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