Apr 16 2012

Spotting the Signs of Dehydration

Spotting the Signs of Dehydration

About 6 weeks ago I had a welcome sudden rush of work. About to start a new job, I had no option but to finish a project within a tight deadline that I’d set myself. For three days, together with quite a bit of commuting, I worked flat out without breaks. At the end of day two my concentration level was dropping and just as I was about to set off for home, I had vision disturbances. Beginning with my peripheral vision, everything started to shimmer. It was like seeing the shimmering horizon of a hot desert, only it was all around me.

In the past this shimmering vision often occurred and usually increased in intensity until it effected my complete field of view. I put it down to staring too much at my computer monitor after working long hours at it.

Since observing the effect of lifestyle changes on my own body and through much research into many health issues, I now have a different conclusion. Ocular migraines, as they are called, have many suspected causes, but I’ve found that as long as I’m adequately hydrated, then I don’t get them.

My previous ocular migraines normally lasted half an hour or more, however I’m now armed with the knowledge to quickly alleviate them (for me that is). At the end of that 2nd day of my important project, I immediately recognised the symptoms and decided to drink over a litre of water. Very quickly all signs of the migraine were gone and within 5 minutes I was able to commence the long drive home.

In the past, I’ve had other issues too that have been alleviated by purely drinking more water, such as; depression, back ache, lack of motivation, fatigue and lack of energy.

Recent events in my family have really emphasised to me the importance of being adequately hydrated. Several times in the passed couple of years my mother-in-law ended up in hospital with no clear diagnosis, a TIA (like a mini stroke) has recently been suspected. I suggested that dehydration might be a cause. I couldn’t be there myself, but over the phone I suggested that she drink regular glasses of water. A couple of days later she was bright and cheerful as if nothing had happened.

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=2125Recently I was with my mother-in-law myself when she pretty much collapsed, I gave her a glass of water and paramedics were called. After several hours in hospital nothing was diagnosed and she could go home. Back at her home, I insisted that she drink a glass of water before going off to bed. The next day she was bright and cheerful as if nothing had happened. However, later on that day she began exhibiting the same signs as before, prior to when she collapsed. We immediately gave her a glass of water and within minutes she pulled out of a tired and dazed state and became bright and cheerful again!

Elderly people often lose their desire to drink water at a time when they need it the most. Consuming lots of pills, eating a high fat diet and processed food all encourage dehydration and increase the need for more water.

I’ve been trying to challenge a friend about changing his lifestyle after a brain tumour operation last year. Two weeks ago he finally said that the ONLY suggestion that he could cope with was to attempt to drink more water! Today, he explained that he struggled due to having to use the loo more often than usual, but he said that he had more energy and he would continue. He’s worked up to drinking about a litre of water a day plus his usual tea and coffee (I suggested 2 litres of water a day).

A friend at work explained to me how he once worked the whole day without a drink of water. At the end of the day his brain wouldn’t function correctly and he became incoherent to his colleagues. A concerned friend suggested that he drink some water. Not long after he did so, the problem went away.

As a general rule, to spot the early signs of dehydration in yourself, or someone you are concerned about, then if you or they are not urinating clear wee at least every two hours then dehydration is highly likely. A typical person should drink a litre of water for every five stone of body weight each day (or take your body weight in pounds and drink half that number in ounces each day). This should be water and not tea, coffee, milk, alcoholic drink or other beverage.

Most people are more concerned about eating three meals a day, or eating meat, or drinking their cup of tea rather than drinking enough water. Water however, is second only to oxygen in our need for survival. Without enough water your body will begin to shut down. The very least dehydration will do is reduce your effectiveness, your ability to concentrate and your energy levels.

I’d really like to hear of any other stories about the benefits of drinking enough water. If you’d like to encourage others with it, please leave a message below my blog post.

Kind regards, Stuart

ps. I recently started a new job which I’m really enjoying. I’m currently working on an urgent project so I’ve been snowed under with work. I haven’t forgotten about my weight loss ebook, I’ll let you know when it’s ready!

 

Image credits:

photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

nixxphotography / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

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Mar 05 2012

What’s the cause of ‘Western’ diseases?

What’s the cause of ‘Western’ diseases?

I’m interested to see if I can help with lifestyle issues at a more local level, so today I had a meeting with a lovely lady who has a responsibility for overseeing childhood obesity issues in the region. She is one of only two doctors ever that I’ve personally met who talked about the significance of lifestyle and how it dramatically impacts our own health.

She said something very fascinating about her work as a GP in Ghana and it backs up much of the research that I have I’ve read. Here’s some of her quotes from our conversation:

“Most diseases are linked to cultural practices”.

“Lifestyle diseases are not common in (Ghanaian) villages, their issues are more to do with sanitation”.

“Go to a different area and you see different diseases along with different cultural practices”.

African village

The food that Ghanaian village people tend to eat is based on pure unadulterated whole food. One of their main forms of exercise is walking. It’s not really seen as a form of exercise, it’s more of a mode of transport. The whole food and active lifestyle means that the Ghanaian villagers have little need for any treatment of our Western diseases. That’s not the case with the Ghanaian city folk though, they experience most of the issues we experience here in the so called ‘developed world’.

The other doctor that linked diet and health in the same sentence to me, is one that I came across when I was receiving hospital treatment for digestive problems and bowel issues. He was a young doctor from the far east and stated that my issues were, “caused by a Western lifestyle”.

For my own bowel and digestive issues, despite undergoing procedures and treatment, things didn’t get any better, in fact they became much worse. It was around this time that I started looking into alternatives to see what I could do to improve matters. It was a bit of a rocky road until I learned how to manage my lifestyle, then the issues started to clear up. The biggest lesson that I learned from all this is that, it’s what we do to ourselves that causes most of our diseases. Another way of putting this is, “a Western lifestyle, causes Western diseases”.

Tip of the iceberg.

Here’s just the tip of our Western disease iceberg… cancer, stroke, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and osteoporosis. These and many other incapacitating issues are caused largely by man made lifestyle choices. If we can recognise this and choose to go against the flow, no longer conforming to our western lifestyle, then we can massively decrease the risk of succumbing to the West’s biggest diseases. Not only that, there are many cases of people reversing these serious issues simply by removing their lifestyle burdens, plus getting back to nature, whole food and an active lifestyle.

 

Further reading – book review: The China Study – by T.Colin Campbell

Kind regards, Stuart

 

ps.If you’d like to subscribe to my ‘Health, Fitness and Feel Good News’ and receive articles like this direct to your inbox, then please sign up at, http://eatmoreraw.net/ . I’m currently working on an ebook, ‘The Whole Food Weight Loss Health Plan’, that will soon be made available free to all my subscribers for a limited time after completion.

 

image credit: Africa village – FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 


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Feb 28 2012

What do a guinea pig, a gorilla and a human have in common?

What do a guinea pig, a gorilla and a human have in common?

Gorillas are magnificent animals and it’s a joy to watch them on wildlife videos. Sadly though they are having a hard time because a more dominant species is destroying their habitat and squeezing them into smaller and smaller areas. A few are ‘cared’ for in zoos, which often provide an unnatural and unhealthy environment. Many of the primates, even though fed a ‘natural diet’ by man, develop health issues. In captivity, gorillas have often been known to experience sudden death.

Zoo food, although based on fruit and veg, is often not fresh. The gorillas just have to eat what’s given to them and some are given food that is not natural to them as a species. All this leads to a depletion of their vitamin C intake. What’s the result of all this? Sadly, like us – they also suffer from heart disease.

Studies have shown that lack of vitamin C is a cause of heart related ill health issues. In it’s natural environment a gorilla would normally consume 25 to 40 pounds of food a day, this would contain approximately 5 grammes of vitamin C. When gorillas in captivity are fed large amounts of vitamin C, then their health improves.
Most animals produce vitamin C and don’t need to consume it, these animals don’t suffer from heart disease. However, there is a handful that don’t produce vitamin C and these include gorillas, humans and guinea pigs. We must all obtain vitamin C from our diet by consuming lots of vitamin C rich food, such as uncooked fresh fruit and vegetables.
If a large portion of your diet is not based around uncooked fresh fruit and vegetables, then I’d highly suggest that you consider taking vitamin C. Don’t follow any RDA (really dumb advice) either, but follow the advice of someone who’s been instrumental in highlighting vitamin C deficiency issues, such as the two times Nobel prize winner, Linus Pauling.

Pauling observed that atheroma (arterial plaque) could be prevented and even reversed when vitamin C was given in sufficient doses. He theorised that heart disease and atheroma are chronic conditions of long term low level vitamin C deficiency, or scurvy. He recommended high levels of C and saw the reversing of heart disease in laboratory animals and humans.

Going back a little further, to the early 1950’s, another researcher G.C.Willis and his team demonstrated that heart disease could be reversed by vitamin C alone. Unfortunately the Pauling/Willis work will never receive the funding and promotion that it deserves as the very simple methods used are both cheap and can’t be patented.

In humans, the health benefits were achieved when taking from 3,000mg to 10,000mg (and sometimes more) of vitamin C a day. Pauling also recommended taking Lysine too, up to 6,000mg a day.

Linus Pauling said:

“If you are at risk of heart disease, or if there is a history of heart disease in your family, if your father or other members of the family died of a heart attack or stroke, or if you have a mild heart attack yourself, then you had better be taking vitamin C and Lysine”.

He recommended that everyone should take:
* 3 grammes of vitamin C per day, giving smaller amounts to children in proportion to body weight.
and at risk people should take:
* 5 to 6 grammes of vitamin c (or more) plus 2g or more lysine per day.

The lack of vitamin C contributes to many health issues such as:
high cholesterol,
heart disease, atheroma, atherosclerosis and associated conditions,
stroke,
mental problems,
excess fat storage,
asthma,
low anaerobic performance,
scurvy,
flu,
low energy & fatigue,
gout,
aging,
cancer,
diabetes.

Vitamin C comes in two main forms that are commonly available:
* ascorbic acid, and
* sodium ascorbate

Try not to use the pill form, they are full of fillers and other rubbish!

If after researching further, that you decide to supplement with vitamin C, then also consider that one of the best things that you could do for your health is to massively increase the amount of fresh raw fruit and vegetables in your diet. There is a high chance that this alone will keep issues like I described above at bay, it may even help reverse them.

Kind regards,
Stuart



credits:
Gorilla Image: Tina Phillips / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Guinea Pig Image: nokhoog_buchachon / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Feb 22 2012

Blog and Website Integration

I’ve been putting in quite a bit of effort behind the scenes to develop the look of my blog and website. I’m attempting to integrate the main website, blog and newsletter sign up pages, all into one consistant look.

Rather than take it down for a day or more, I’ve decided to integrate many of the changes live (it should be down at the most for a couple of hours sometime in the next few days). Whilst I make live changes, links and menus may occasionally show inconsistent behaviour. If you need to find something, from an old link, then please use the search box.

Thanks for your patience and for your interest in my blog, newsletter and website.

Kind regards,
Stuart :-)

ps. I’m thrilled about my new ebook! I think it will help many of you who’ve contacted me with various issues, not just weight related. As a last minute name change, I’ve decided to called it, ‘The Whole Food Weight Loss Health Plan’. It’s very close be being released, but I still have some corrections and formatting to sort out.

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Feb 18 2012

How to Breath Easily

How to breath easily….

I was wondering if you’ve ever had any breathing issues? The reason I ask is that, I thought you might like to know how I improved my own breathing. I never thought that I had any issues to complain about, but my wife disagreed with me though! My issues were the sort of thing that most of us just put up with, they were a part of who I was. I didn’t think that I had any issues to do with breathing and therefore I had no desire to be ‘cured’ either.

These breathing issues were just normal for me…

* I used to breath heavily at night often with snoring.
* Sometimes as I was nodding off, I would wake up with a gasp of air after realising I’d not breathed for a while.
* I used to constantly clear my throat, typically at least once a minute for every waking hour.

Although a raw food diet helped to improve some health issues, some were actually made worse. Breathing wasn’t effected either way, positively or negatively.

I really noticed breathing clarity once I cut out the fat from my diet and ate pretty much exclusively low fat vegan plant based whole food. This dramatically helped me to breath more easily and to sleep soundly and quietly.

In the past few years, I’ve done quite a few experiments and had the occasional slip up along the way, with my body usually telling me when I’ve not done something right. I’ve found that these occasional deviations from my desired lifestyle have been be very beneficial from understanding my own health and learning what to keep off and what to continue on with.

These are the worse culprits for triggering old breathing issues, worst is listed first:
1. Being dehydrated.
2. Consuming dairy of any kind; milk, cheese, yogurts, cream etc.
3. Eating animal products.
4. Consuming oil and most types of nuts & seedsl
5. Eating processed grains.
6. Consuming processed food of any kind, especially with any additives or preservatives.
7. Consuming fish, although fish tends to less problematic than the above items.

Here’s what I’ve found helps give clear breathing and prevent snoring:
1. Drinking plenty of water (I drink 3 litres a day).
2. Eating plenty of water rich whole food.
3. Consuming lots of fruit.
4. Eating lot of greens, raw or cooked (these are magnesium rich).
5. Eating low fat plant based carbohydrate rich whole food, preferably raw, but also cooked.
6. Sleeping without a pillow.
7. Getting fit and doing longer, slower, sustained exercise. ie. long walks and long slow jogging or cycling.
8. Adding magnesium chloride flakes to the bath water, or spraying magnesium oil on my body. This aids clear breathing and helps give a sound sleep too (friends have reported truly remarkable results with it. I’ll write more about that in a later article).

As long as I don’t cheat with what I eat and drink, then my breathing at night is pretty much silent. I don’t get sleep apnea either. Also my lifelong habit of having to clear my throat every minute is gone. I can’t remember the last time I had hiccups either.

If you do still get congestion, then great!… and don’t fret about it! Congestion is just your body detoxing, so don’t beat yourself up if you have it, but rejoice that your body is clearing out. Just stop heaping things into your life that cause your body to need to clean out!

When you rest, your body gets to work cleaning and repairing, especially whilst sleeping. That’s why if you have a cold, it always seems worse in the morning. Heavy detox may take a few months, or even a year or too. No matter how clean your diet is though, your body does what is best in the environment that you have created for it.

If you have found that your breathing has been helped as a result of improving your diet then, please leave a reply message on my blog.

I’ve had a few friends contact me saying that they struggled leaving blog post messages. After looking into it, I changed it so that you no longer need to be logged in to leave messages. Instead, to handle spam from those nuisance spamming robots, I installed a spam handling system. So far I’ve not been pestered by robot spam messages and it appears to be working!

Kind regards,
Stuart

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Feb 10 2012

I’ve had the flu!

I’ve had the flu!

Sorry I’ve not sent out my newsletter or made any blog posts recently. I like to keep in touch, work on my writing and encourage others when I’m feeling good myself. After five years of no cough, cold or the flu, not even a sniffle, I’ve had the flu!

Early in November I was with a good friend and his wife. A week previous to this they both had a flu vaccine – and believe me, they came down with the flu, big style! I’m not a fan of vaccines, because over the past few years I’ve seen enough evidence to convince me never to have another. I personally know a couple of vaccine injured people and have read about numerous others online. Just do an online search for ‘vaccine injuries’ if you want to know more.

Not long after I was with my sick friends I came down with something, nothing serious, just a few sniffles. I had to blow my nose for the first time in four or five years. ‘Sickness’ is your body’s way of cleaning up. As long as you’re physically healthy and have a good diet then most ‘sickness’, if left to run it’s full course, will actually be good for you.

Towards the end of November, as I was driving my car in rush hour and attempting to pull away at a roundabout, there was a slight jolt and then… nothing. My car was stuck, so I had to push it off the roundabout to a safe place. My front lefthand drive-shaft had snapped! The drive-shaft was a difficult to find part and I was quoted rather a lot of money to have it stripped down, welded and re-assembled, it was more than I could afford. I managed to find a reasonably priced brandnew part online though, so I fixed it myself. I took it apart one evening and fixed it the next day. There was snow on the ground and the temperature was 1 degree centigrade! Shortly after this, my sniffles became much worse. Congestion seemed to get right down in to my lungs and stay there for a good couple of months. For many weeks, I coughed up all sorts of unpleasant stuff!

I’m still not quite 100%, but I feel good and a couple of weeks ago my mind sharpened up again. Recently some friends have been commenting, ‘you’re looking well’, which pleasantly surprised me. At least now I feel good, I’m much more productive and I’ve thrown myself back into things.

That increased productivity has enabled me to get my head down and virtually finish one of my projects. Due to popular demand and issues that some online friends have, I’ve been working hard on an ebook that I’ll releasing very soon. I’m really excited about it. It’s called the

Whole Food Weight Loss Action Plan

I’ll be offering it free, as a thank you gift, to all the subscribers of my, ‘Health, Fitness and Feel Good News’. If you would like a copy, then you need to sign up on my website home page at eatmoreraw.net . It will be ready in the next couple of weeks. It will not be permanently ‘free’ though, as it will be something I intend selling as part of another package that I’m developing. So make sure you don’t leave it too long, or you might miss it!

Kind regards, Stuart

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Oct 24 2011

Oral Hygiene

Oral Hygiene

My teeth are yellow stained and I was seriously considering teeth whitening, the £500 anticipated cost is what stopped me. The staining is due to using tetracycline based drugs from my past life of succumbing to the local drug pushers in white coats. I’ve not drunk tea or coffee or alcohol in years. Apparently, tetracycline stained teeth are very difficult to correct and require many months of bleaching with no guarantees.

I was initially horrified at the ingredients in the teeth whitening products and decided to investigate more. The whitening effect occurs due to the oxidising ingredients. There are some very undesirable chemicals, but one of these oxidising ingredients is hydrogen peroxide, which in small doses has many therapeutic benefits. I read extensively about it, along with other alternatives too. Here’s the things, that I know about, that help with teeth health, oral hygiene and possibly help to rectify staining:

  •  Sodium bicarbonate (not baking soda).
  • Activated charcoal.
  • Hydrogen peroxide.
  • MMS activated.
  • Oil pulling.
  • Tooth soap.
  • Super clean diet, mainly whole food, no animal products, no added fat food, and not much else.
  • Only drink water, fruit and veg juice, smoothies, soups and that’s it.
  • Ensure there’s a few hours between meals and don’t snack.
  • Be careful of dried and sticky food.
  • Avoid fluoride (fluoride treated water and toothpaste etc).
  • Keep off regular toothpaste, it’s an assault on the human body.

 

Make sure that you search and read up on the above before trying them out.

If anyone has had any success with any of these or any other methods then I’m very interested in hearing more, please leave a blog comment. I’ve tried most of the above, over 5 or 6 months, a few days on a few days off. I’ve chopped and changed with different methods with no fixed plan. I’m pleased to say that my difficult to correct tetracycline stained teeth appear to have lightened… slightly!

Kind regards, Stuart Porter :-)

You can sign up to my health fitness and feel good news here… http://EatMoreRaw.net

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Oct 06 2011

Recovering from an inguinal hernia operation – two years on

If you are squeamish you may wish to skip this post, otherwise read on!

Recovering from an inguinal hernia operation – two years on

An inguinal hernia occurs in the groin area, off to one side, just below where the pubic hair starts. It typically effects 27% of men and 3% of women. Mine was a ‘direct inguinal hernia’. It can appear as a lump like half an egg size or sometimes bigger. For me it generally disappeared when I was lying down on my back to sleep. That’s when I was relaxing and the protruding intestine dropped back inside of me. You can read up more about types of inguinal hernia here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inguinal_hernia

I was initially unsure about whether to have the operation or not, as sometimes the lump would disappear for many days. Eating lots of easy to digest raw food helped. Cycling helped too. I would sometimes push the hernia back in place and then go cycling. I think being crouched forward kept the hernia lump inside of me and the cycling strengthened up the muscles. I eventually decided to have the operation though, as the lump did keep re-occurring and it can be dangerous if the protruding intestine becomes strangulated.

I investigated the two main types of surgery on the internet and decided that I wanted open surgery. A female friend of mine had a similar hernia operation but using the key hole surgery method. In both of these procedures, a plastic mesh is placed covering the tear in the muscle. The mesh is stitched in place to hold it there whilst tissue grows around it to hold it further. The mesh and scar tissue then prevent the intestine protruding through the muscle wall.

My friend has had some very difficult complications as a result of her key hole surgery. Open surgery takes longer to heal from but the surgeon appears in much more control. I’m glad I went for that, mine healed nicely and I have absolutely no problems with it now.

My operation went really well, except for the fact that I had a horrible chemical residue coming off my lungs from the general anaesthetic. I now know that activated charcoal would have really helped settle my stomach. Due to the disgusting chemical taste, I was nearly throwing up on the night of the operation. I sat up most of the night awake and sipping water. With the pain, it felt like the retching, if it progressed to vomiting, would have burst my stitches! Thankfully the sipping of the water for several hours helped massively.

Recently, I coughed up the same disgusting tasting chemicals that I couldn’t cough up on the night of my operation. This was a few days into trying out using hydrogen peroxide to detox the after effects of years of antibiotics. If you want to find out about hydrogen peroxide then do an internet search for ‘the many benefits of hydrogen peroxide’. It certainly forces the body into detox mode!

It took 18 months for any hernia operation twinges to settle down. I actually found that weight training in a very slow and controlled manner helped settle down the final twinges. Despite not eating meat, dairy, fish, or eggs and going against what traditional medical doctors and nutritionists say we should eat, I have made a full recovery. I took no painkillers. There is absolutely no scar and no evidence that I have even had a hernia operation!

Best regards, Stuart:-)

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Sep 18 2011

Recipe – a happy accident with frozen bananas!

How about this for a recipe, the only ingredient is bananas. Here’s how I discovered it… by a happy accident!

About 9 months to a year ago, I had rather too many ripe bananas, so I peeled and froze some of the surplus and stored them in the freezer using large plastic food containers. They have been stored at -18 deg.C for at least 9 months. My wife was going through things in the freezer and turfed out my remaining long forgotten bananas! They needed to thaw out, so I left them all day and intended to eat them the next day, but unfortunately I forgot as we all went out for the day.

After two days sitting on the side, this afternoon I finally remembered the bananas! I very gingerly tasted the bananas, which were by now totally mushy, rather brown in places and sitting in their own syrup bath created as they thawed out!

WOW WOW WOW !!!!! They were so totally awesome! They were as sweet as dates and the super sweet syrup from the defrosted ripe bananas was even better than blended dates!

How ripe do you like your bananas?! If you have too many, don’t throw them out, freeze the really ripe ones and try out my happy accident. Perhaps don’t leave them so long in the freezer, or lying around for 2 days either!

Stuart :-)

ps. If you’d like me to let you know when I have other health, fitness or feel good news, then please sign up to my ‘Health, Fitness and Feel Good News! at eatmoreraw.net

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Sep 08 2011

How much to eat on a low fat diet

How much to eat on a low fat diet

As long as I eat enough calories, then I’m equally satisfied eating either fruit and salads, or very simple low fat cooked starches and greens.

10 grammes of carb’s per kg of body weight per day

To make sure that you eat enough calories from carbohydrates, go and weigh yourself. For every kg of body weight, eat 10 grammes of carb’s in a day. ie 40 calories of carb’s for every kg of bodyweight. I first heard about this from Harley Johnstone, aka Durianrider. Harley used to suffer from fatigue. He’s now a lean, fit, energetic and passionate guy. Harley, eats a high carb low fat raw diet and can ride 350 miles on his bike in one day! Check out

30bananasaday.com , facebook.com/pages/Durianrider/197363716986830  and  youtube.com/user/durianriders

If you weigh 10 stone, that’s 140 Lb, or 64kg. You need to eat 40 calories x 64kg = 2560 calories of carb’s a day. If you are following a high carb’ low fat diet, like ‘The 80 10 10 diet’ by Doug Graham, or the Dr McDougal programme of eating, then that represents about 80% of your total calorific intake for the day. So divide by 80 and times by 100, to get 3200 calories a day. That is the suggested calories for an active person, male or female, on a low fat diet when that person weigh’s in at 10 stones. A heavier or a very active person needs to eat more.

If you are eating a fruit based diet, then that is like eating 30 bananas a day plus large salads with plenty of leafy greens. If you are on a starch based diet, then that is like eating over 3kg of baked potatoes, with heaps of steamed cabbage, kale or other veg, or over 2.5kg (dry weight approx 800g) of cooked brown rice plus the veggies.

If you do the above without cheating on high fat food or animal protein food, then you’ll have plenty of energy to exercise and feel totally satisfied. This applies when eating fruit or cooked food, but don’t eat fruit and starches together though!

Sometimes I’ll do long bike rides. If so, then I might load up with dates, bananas and oranges. If I can’t get these, then I’ll load up with potatoes and rice.

As an example, a couple of weeks ago, carrying lots of gear, I did an 80 bike ride in the hills.  I ate quite a few bananas for breakfast, then I carried with me another 8 or 10 bananas and at least 3kg of baked potatoes. I still had lots of energy when I arrived home. On a really long ride, with an overnight stop, I’ll also take with me a giant container of rice, or lots more fruit.

Hydration… I also tend to carry lots of water. I’ll generally drink 4 litres of water on a long ride (in cool Northern UK), this comes from 6 water bottles of 0.75 litres each. I don’t need to carry all this, I do it out of choice, it saves me having to stop off to refill.

Yes, it is a huge amount of extra weight compared to stopping off for fast food or carrying chocalate bars, but I feel so much better and have so much more energy when doing this. In spite of the weight, so far I haven’t found a hill on the roads that is too steep to cycle up!

On the long bike rides, carrying all that gear, I might burn off up to 8 thousand calories. Any short fall in calories, due to the long exercise sessions is generally made up in the previous day’s carb’ up and in the following days.

Advice to the uninitiated…

If you’ve never tried the low fat high carb’s way of eating before, then I’d highly suggest weighing everything out. The reason is that you need to appreciate the volume of food that you need to consume to get the recommended calories from carb’s. If you don’t eat enough calories from carb’s then you’ll end up being hungry and weak, or you’ll reach for fat food, grease burgers, piza, junk food and all the stimulating non- foods.

Carbohydrate contains 4 calories per gramme, fat contains 9 calories per gramme. Carbohydrate rich low fat food also comes with lots of fibre and water. The volume it takes up is huge compared to dense fat foods, many of which contain just fat and not much else.

If you like eating a lot, but also want lots of energy and want to lose weight, then the high carb’, low fat diet is the way to go!

*** Health Warning ***

Any attempt at doing any of the above is done at your own risk. Be carefull as it may result in you feeling seriously energetic and at risk of being called ‘obsessed’ by all your couch potato exercise phobic friends. You may also be at risk of overcoming many chronic degenerative diseases, as happened with me!

Kind regards, Stuart :-)

ps. If you want to receive notification of articles like this, then please sign up to my ‘Health, Fitness and Feel Good News’ at eatmoreraw.net

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