Holistic Heart Club

01/01/2024

🌟✨ Blessed New Year, dear friends! 🌟✨ As we step into the radiant embrace of another chapter, may the divine energies of joy, love, and prosperity illuminate your path! 🌈🕊️ Let the sacred rhythms of the universe dance through your heart, filling it with boundless positivity and serenity. 🎉🙏

04/02/2021

Rainbow is the secret of happiness

29/07/2020

06/02/2020

"eat the rainbow,"
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When someone says "eat the rainbow," they're trying to explain, in a simplified way, that the color of your food can tell you a lot about its nutritional value, and eating a variety of colors is one sure method to get as many of those vitamins and minerals as possible (and eat a broad, diverse amount of food in the process.) The phrase is actually an oversimplification of a real issue. It's not difficult to get the vitamins and nutrients you need from a solid, balanced diet, but it can be difficult if you're a picky eater, or have children who don't exactly like to expand their horizons. In fact, much of the documentation we found that uses the phrase is aimed at parents helping children adopt a more healthful diet.

The people who should really consider paying attention to the color of their food are people who either don't get enough variation in their diet as-is, or people looking to expand their culinary horizons but also want to eat a nutritious diet. Eating the rainbow isn't really a ticket on its own from an unhealthy lifestyle to a healthy one, but it is a step in the right direction, especially considering the focus on fresh produce. The chart above comes from the folks at Chasing Delicious, and a previous post about the nutrients in different kinds of food. It's a good primer on the types of nutrients you'll get from different fruits and vegetables, grouped by color and preparation time. If you're looking for something you can take on the go, previously mentioned app Wholesome does a good job of putting all of this information on your phone, in your pocket. On the one hand, both tools can be used to find nutritious substitutes for foods you already enjoy but would like to branch out from. On the other, they can be used to find tasty, alternative ways to get more vitamins and minerals in your diet that you may be lacking.

What’s in a colour?
RED
Red fruits and vegetables are coloured by a natural plant pigment called lycopene. Lycopene is a powerful antioxidant that can help reduce the risk of cancer and keep our heart healthy.

PURPLE /BLUE
The plant pigment anthocyanin is what gives blue/purple fruits and vegetables their distinctive colour. Anthocyanin also has antioxidant properties that protect cells from damage and can help reduce the risk of cancer, stroke and heart disease.

ORANGE/YELLOW
Carotenoids give this group their vibrant colour. A well-known carotenoid called Betacarotene is found in sweet potatoes, pumpkins and carrots. It is converted to vitamin A, which helps maintain healthy mucous membranes and healthy eyes. Another carotenoid called lutein is stored in the eye and has been found to prevent cataracts and age-related macular degeneration, which can lead to blindness.

GREEN
Green vegetables contain a range of phytochemicals including carotenoids, indoles and saponins, all of which have anti-cancer properties. Leafy greens such as spinach and broccoli are also excellent sources of folate.

BROWN/WHITE
White fruits and vegetables contain a range of health-promoting phytochemicals such as allicin (found in garlic) which is known for its antiviral and antibacterial properties. Some members of the white group, such as bananas and potatoes, are also a good source of potassium.

Offering a wide range of colours in children’s food not only looks great but also ensures that children are receiving a great variety of nutrients. Here are some healthy ways you can interest children into the marvellous, colourful world of fruit and vegetables:

Create your own Fruit and Veg Rainbow
A great way to keep track of the colours children eat each day is to create a fruit and veg
rainbow poster. Every time the children eat a colourful fruit and vegetable they can place a corresponding coloured sticker on the rainbow or get them to colour in a small section on the rainbow. This is also a great activity that parents can do with their children at home.

Create a Rainbow on Your Plate
Make a tropical rainbow fruit salad with fruits of each colour: oranges, strawberries, mango, rockmelon, kiwifruit, bananas, and blueberries. Stir fry your own mix of vegetables using each colour: red onions, carrots, baby corn, broccoli
and mushrooms.

17/10/2019

What is a Whole-Food, Plant-Based Diet?
A whole-foods, plant-based diet is based on the following principles:

Whole food describes natural foods that are not heavily processed. That means whole, unrefined, or minimally refined ingredients.
Plant-based means food that comes from plants and doesn’t contain animal ingredients such as meat, milk, eggs, or honey.
A whole-foods, plant-based diet lets you meet your nutritional needs by only eating natural, minimally-processed foods where none of the ingredients come from animals

Your Whole-Food, Plant-Based Diet—The Foods You’ll Love
Here’s a quick overview of the major food categories you’ll enjoy on a plant-based diet, with examples:

Fruits: any type of fruit including apples, bananas, grapes, strawberries, citrus fruits, etc.
Vegetables: plenty of veggies including peppers, corn, avocados, lettuce, spinach, kale, peas, collards, etc.
Tubers: root vegetables like potatoes, carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes, beets, etc.
Whole grains: grains, cereals, and other starches in their whole form, such as quinoa, brown rice, millet, whole wheat, oats, barley, etc. Even popcorn is a whole grain.
Legumes: beans of any kind, plus lentils, pulses, and similar ingredients.
There are plenty of other foods you can also enjoy— including nuts, seeds, tofu, tempeh, whole-grain flour and breads, and plant-based milks. However, we recommend eating these foods in moderation, because they are more calorie-dense and can contribute to weight gain.

The Benefits of a Whole-Food, Plant-Based Diet
There are several major benefits to moving to plant-based nutrition, all supported by excellent science. These benefits include:

Easy weight management: People who eat a plant-based diet tend to be leaner than those who don’t, and the diet makes it easy to lose weight and keep it off—without counting calories.
Disease prevention: Whole-food, plant-based eating can prevent, halt, or even reverse chronic diseases, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes.
A lighter environmental footprint: A plant-based diet places much less stress on the environment.
(Courtesy: forksoverknives)

02/06/2019

Why Does Animal Protein Cause Weight Gain?
(By Garth Davis, MD, February 17, 2016)

You might be asking yourself how protein can be associated with weight gain when you have always been told to eat protein to lose weight. There are many possible answers to this very complex question. One comprehensive 2009 review considers mounting evidence that the chronic acid intake from high-protein diets may actually cause cellular dysfunction and eventual weight gain (Berkemeyer 2009). While this article is an interesting read (to me, at least), I think the answer is much more simple.

Volumetrics and Calorie Density
You may have heard of a term called “volumetrics.” Barbara Rolls, Ph.D., a nutritionist at Penn State, invented this term to describe a very simple idea: if you eat food with low-calorie density, then you will not gain weight. The idea is that the stomach has stretch receptors that feed back to the brain when our stomachs are full. If you eat food with lots of calories per weight, by the time your stretch receptors alert your brain that you’re full, you have already eaten too many calories. However, if you eat food with a low amount of calories [per weight], you can stuff your face until your stomach tells you that you’re full without overconsuming calories (Rolls 2000; Rolls and Bell 1999; Rolls, Ello-Martin, et al. 2004).

calorie density

The Fiber Factor
Fruits, vegetables, and beans are high in fiber, which is not absorbed into our bloodstream. So some of the weight of these plant foods does not translate into calories absorbed. Likewise, the fiber holds water and obviously water won’t cause fat gain. So if you eat a giant 280 gram slice of watermelon, due to the fiber and water, you get only 85 calories. A 280 gram piece of chicken delivers almost six times the calories (480). If you could actually consume 280 grams of olive oil (20 tablespoons, in case you’re crazy), you’d take in a whopping 2,380 calories.

This is why I tell my patients they do not need to count calories when they eat a plant-based diet. I don’t care how many apples they eat, or how much kale they consume. I have never seen anybody get fat from broccoli or bananas. One patient didn’t believe me and tried to prove me wrong by eating six apples a day. She still lost weight. Even the most dedicated overeater will become full before eating too many calories.

As an added bonus, the fiber in fruits and vegetables acts as a binder to the sugar they contain. I don’t recommend drinking juices because they remove the fiber from the sugar. When you drink orange juice, the sugar goes into your system real fast. This doesn’t make you fat, but it does make you hungry in an hour or so. Eat an orange, on the other hand, and the fiber turns the sugar into a slow release pill so you don’t experience the same sugar rush. High fiber decreases the glycemic load of the food, and studies have shown that this really does decrease hunger (Lennerz, Alsop, et al. 2013). I believe this is why fiber is so well associated with weight loss. When you look at large studies, people eating the most fruits, veggies, and grains are eating the highest fiber and thereby eating lower calories and losing more weight than meat eaters (Mozaffarian, Hao, et al. 2011).

Plant-Based Diet for Weight Loss
I have been using plant-based diets for weight loss for many years with considerable success. My goal is not to make everybody vegan, but rather to greatly increase the amount of fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes consumed, while decreasing our usual reliance on [animal] protein. I want my patients to turn their plate around. I tell them to dethrone the meat from its starring role in the center of the plate. I always hear that plant-based diets are hard to do, but it hasn’t been for my patients. It’s not just me; studies have found that vegetarian diets are very well tolerated in clinical settings.

You might be asking yourself how protein can be associated with weight gain when you have always been told to eat protein to lose weight. There are many possible answers to this very complex question.

09/01/2019

https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-12-14-compounds-in-pomegranate-juice-can-trigger-cancer-cell-death.html?fbclid=IwAR1GbTP5u-HHbzpGYCZQl2DLxPnS0aDXyyB0tlGLB_mec-e9qxlnFWc-bX8

With proper dietary supplementation with anti-inflammatory and antioxidant agents, cancer may be prevented or slowed down. One of these powerful anti-cancer agents is pomegranate. According to research, pomegranate juice and pomegranate extract contain powerful healing chemical compounds such as lut

09/12/2017

24/11/2017

A nutritionist reveals the best time to eat carbohydrates — so that your body uses them up instead of storing them as fat
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What's the deal with carbohydrates? Should you eat them or cut them out entirely? Michelle Adams-Aren't, a sports nutrition consultant, explains how to eat carbs so that you still get the best body composition.

Michelle Adams-Arent: Carbohydrates, right? There always has to be a fall guy. When it comes to weight loss and carbohydrates, again, I think people jump on the bandwagon of let's not have any.

It's not really the place that we want to go. If we could ideally time our carbohydrates maybe around our workout, or maybe a little bit more in the morning, vs. eating them heavily at night, you might notice a better body composition change.

In the morning, our body is actually a little bit more adept at handling carbohydrate influx, so consuming carbohydrates. Our body is better able to use those carbohydrates at that time and they're less likely to be stored as fat. The same thing happens around our workout.

Exercise is a fabulous change to the environment in our body, and it actually changes how we react to the food that we take in. For real though, sugar is not the devil. It's a timing issue. It's all in context. Sugar is the fastest burning, cleanest burning source of fuel that your body has. So we need it. But we need it around our exercise. We don't need it when we're sitting on our couch. Your body doesn't need all of that carbohydrate energy at that time because you're not using it.

It's kind of like trying to fill up your gas tank when you're not driving anywhere. You just keep filling it up – I don't care how cheap gas is — it's spilling on the ground. You're just storing it as body fat. So when is the best time to have it? Again, around your workout, earlier in the morning, your body is better able to handle those nutrients. You'll be fine if you do it that way.
Holistic Heart Club

25/10/2017

10 Foods you should never eat empty stomach

19/10/2017

May this Rangoli decorate your life with-
R- Rainbow of happiness
A- Affection of loved ones
N- Nourishment
G- Glory in every field
O- Overwhelming success
L- Lasting good health
I- Instant smile
A very happy and prosperous Deepavali 2017!