Most people are social beings with invites to dinner, birthday parties, weddings, christenings, Christmas, Easter, New year, anniversaries, baby showers etc. Party food can be a real stumbling block for a lot of people because … dieters are in the habit of going to a social event hungry. Many dieters have the mentality of skipping a meal or ‘saving themselves’ so to speak during the day as they know they are going out later. Big mistake! As blood sugar levels drop.

I hear all the time people say at dinner or a party “I am starving”. That person will be eating whatever is laid out in front of them. These people say to me “you have so much self-control, are you not tempted with all those unhealthy treats?” I never go out hungry I have a healthy snack before I go, so when I get there I can make choices. Never expose yourself to that, make sure you never go out hungry.

Research shows that when people go to the supermarket hungry – they make more unhealthy decisions and buy more or bigger size packets. Whereas when people go shopping after eating, when they are no longer hungry they make much healthy choices, more sensible decisions.

It is also a good idea if you go food shopping go on your own if you can. Leave the children, the grand-children and husbands for that matter at home, as they are so good at filling the shopping trolleys with all sorts of unhealthy fattening things.

Taking these steps will help prevent osteoporosis but will also help the body get the minerals it needs to calm the appetite.

1) Generally, we should be eating natural foods, as close as nature intended. We should be eating foods that provide us with the maximum of nutrients, foods that are easy to digest and work in harmony with our bodies. You need top-grade ‘fuel’ to function well. Just as a high performance car would not perform well on low-grade fuel. We can make our body’s job very difficult or very easy. Good nutrition is essential at any age but even more so as we get older.

2) A healthy program needs to be followed for the rest of your life. I have eaten this way for well over 2 decades now, so I know what it is like to change habits of a lifetime.

3) Exercise is very important, helps the bones, circulation, heart, moods – includes walking, dancing, jogging, what ever makes you happy and you know you will continue to do.

Our general attitude to life will have a direct effect on every cell in our body. It will have a direct effect on every aspect of our lives. Making laughter a bigger part of your life and trying to make other people around you laugh is healthy. Laughter is a true gift and there is no other living creature on this earth that is so lucky, even the laughing hyena really doesn’t laugh.

Research reveals that laughter reduces the level of stress hormones like cortisol, epinephrine, and adrenaline. All of these hormones when they reach chronic levels are destructive and will increase pain, anxiety, irritability, interfere with our quality of sleep, speed up aging and slow down healing and repair. For others this can mean binging and/or comfort eating. At the same time laughter will increase levels of health-enhancing hormones like endorphins and neurotransmitters (happy chemicals). This means generally – you will feel better, have less pain, be in a much better mood, speed up healing and repair, sleep better, maintain better blood sugar levels and slow down aging.

For instance it is a problem if your goal is an event like a school reunion and the need to get into a particular dress. However, this event can be used as a stepping stone. Having a series of stepping stones can help you get to where you want to be – step by step, stone by stone.

Important steps –

1) Read more articles on NATURAL weight-loss – this will give you a much better and deeper understanding

2)  It really is well worth while filling in a daily food mood journal – the evidence has proven it helps in many ways

3) Relax and enjoy your food – this means chewing your food really well, most people don’t, there are so many benefits to chewing well

Foods that will elevate your levels naturally

The B vitamins and zinc are important as they help the brain to manufacture neuro-chemicals out of amino acids. B3 is very important found in a  B complex supplement. Do not take B3 on its own however you can take a B complex and add a B3 supplement. If you are short of B3 your body will have to make it from tryptophan. You want to reserve your store of tryptophan for the production serotonin and not for making B3.

Eating foods that contain a good amount of tryptophan will ensure better levels of serotonin.