Of the three legs of the stool we described previously, the one that most people overlook and the easiest to rectify, is hydration; drinking enough water. As a guide you should be drinking at around two litres, (that’s around three and a half pints) of water every day, more in warmer weather or if you’re doing active physical exercise. Many people do not appreciated that your body has an inbuilt barometer to show you if you are dehydrated. If when you go for a pee it’s a dark colour, then you are dehydrated, it needs to be clear to straw coloured, simple as that, everyone is the same, no exceptions.

I’m often asked by people that find plain simple water really boring to drink on its own, if there are ways of making it more interesting, but still healthy. If you are looking for more energy then there is a Thermojetics® Instant Herbal Beverage made by Herbalife which is a superior form of herbal tea that counts towards your daily intake of water, can be drunk hot or cold, has a pleasant flavour, no after taste and if drunk regularly in place of tea or coffee can give you two to three more hours of energy a day. The instant beverage comes in four flavours; original, lemon, raspberry and peach. Why not try some yourself : Gift of Health Herbal Beverage

Other ways of making plain water more interesting to drink include the addition of natural fruit juices, for example take an orange and squeeze some juice in. Yes, it contains some calories, fructose has calories, but natural fructose from squeezed oranges or lemons is good for you, it has vitamins and minerals or anti-oxidants as well. Anti-oxidants are something you hear a lot about and these fight off free radicals. Free radicals are things that are in the atmosphere that are attacking your body, they come from pollution, car-fumes and are attacking you all the time, the anti-oxidants found in fruit, for example, protect your body from infections to your body and skin caused by free-radicals.

Still on the subject of liquids, it is important that people understand that coffee dehydrates you, tea dehydrates you, fizzy drinks dehydrate you and alcohol seriously dehydrates you. Drinking alcohol is not great for your body, it’s a poison, people tend to drink alcohol, especially in Britain, because they’re thirsty. If you go to the continent they drink alcohol differently, if you order a bottle of wine, for example, the first thing you get put on your table is a jug of water. What they understand is that you should drink the water because you are thirsty and the wine because you like the taste and the effect of the alcohol, a serious difference to how we drink in Britain, where we drink more alcohol if we’re thirsty. All we do as a result is dehydrate ourselves. What alcoholic drinks are best for you, or at any rate the least worst , you may ask ? Well, white wine and a lemonade or spritzer is one way of reducing the alcoholic content and thus reducing the dehydrating effect. Red wine contains lots of anti-oxidants and so is also good for you, in so much as any alcohol is good for you. Spirits made from distilled cane sugars, such as rum as probably the worst in terms of their content, health-wise.

The last of the three legs of the stool to maintain your metabolism in balance is exercise. When I say ‘exercise’ people often say ‘I can’t do that because I’ve got a gammy leg’ or ‘I’ve got this or the other’. Exercise means doing more physical activity than you did yesterday, so  if the amount of physical activity you did yesterday was pick up TV remote control up, then today take the batteries out so that you have to get up to change the channel by hand. Do anything to introduce a bit of physical activity into your life, if you’re already an active person and do a bit of walking, buy a pedometer, put it in your pocket and see how many steps you do a day. Even if it’s only doing the housework you can stretch yourself, exercise is something people used to do in their daily lives, now so many things are done for you, you need to make an effort to bring physical activity back into your life. If you’re doing the housework turn the radio up and dance around the room while you’re doing it. If you work in an office, don’t take the lift, take the stairs. Get off the bus a couple of stops early and walk the last bit. If you sit in an office all day, don’t take your lunch at your desk, get up and go for a walk, do some window shopping, but most importantly do more today than you did yesterday, that’s what exercise is all about. As you start to get more active you start to build muscle tissue, the more muscle tissue you build up in your body the more calories you burn, even when you’re asleep. That’s because the difference between fat and muscle is that fat burns off about seven calories per pound per day whereas muscle tissue burns off about fourteen calories per pound per day, so the more muscle tissue your body has the more calories you burn off even at rest. That’s called the ‘basal rate’, otherwise known as your metabolism or metabolic rate. There’s a lot of myths about the metabolic rate, people say they’re fat and have a low metabolic rate because their grandmother had one and that’s complete nonsense because you create your own metabolic rate based on the amount of muscle tissue that your body has got. So, if you want to lose weight while you sleep, all you have to do is alter your body’s composition so that you have got less fat and more muscle.

One of the three things I like to talk about are ‘the three legs on a stool’ that unless you have in place before you do anything else then nothing else you try is going to be effective. The first of these things, (and  none of them cost anything by the way), is hydration. I’m constantly amazed that when I ask people how much water they drink most people say ‘none’. They drink tea, they drink coffee, they drink alcohol, but they don’t actually drink water. When you ask people about their health, especially in Britain, 75% of people’s visits to a doctor are to do with dietary problems. The biggest of these dietary problems is the elimination of waste, because most people don’t have that functioning correctly. The human body uses 1.7 litres of water (that’s three pints) just to survive. If you don’t drink that much water then where your body has to get it from is to wring the water, the moisture, from everything else that you put in your mouth and if it’s doing that, then it’s drawing water from other places that it’s needed. It means you’re not getting enough of that water in your blood which is made up of 82% water, that you’re not getting the cushioning in your organs, you’re not getting proper cushioning in your joints, it means that your heart is not looked after properly and all these things are affected. Also, the elimination of waste, which takes an awful lot of moisture and if you are not drinking water then your body has to wring it out of everything else that you’ve got inside you. One of the first places that this manifests itself is in your skin because that’s on the outside, so if you want to look older, drink any water. So, in summary, you need about two litres of what a day, but what is two litres ? Well it’s about eight glasses, so make sure that you drink this each day.

The second leg of the stool is sleep. Unless you get seven to eight hours of sleep you are not recharging your body. We’re all like battery operated tools, if you want to run out of power or energy, then don’t get enough sleep.  If you want lots of energy, you need to recharge your batteries. Also, in your sleep, it’s the time when your skin regenerates itself. So unless you’re having adequate sleep, your skin suffers, you can develop serious signs of ageing because of not getting adequate sleep, but most people do not realise this. It is also the time when people go through exfoliation, so the skin keeps fresher. As you get older the body slows down and needs a bit of help from an exfoliating cream, a lot of people and even doctors, can misdiagnose dry skin, particularly on the face and assume it is a form of eczema and prescribe medication when all they actually need is sufficient sleep and an exfoliating cream.

Tomorrow; the third and final leg of the stool that helps keeps your metabolism in balance.

I say to people, ‘what do you have for breakfast’ and they say : “a bowl of crunchy nut cornflakes, a glass of orange juice, a cup of black coffee and then I rush off to catch the train”, and I say, ‘how do you feel on that ?’ and they say : “well, I feel OK”, ‘and do you ever feel hungry ?’, “well, funnily enough I start to feel hungry about 10 o’clock or even before I get off the train, because I travel up to London  everyday”. ‘So what do you do then ?’, I ask. “I crave something sweet, so I normally have a croissant and another cup of coffee”, they reply. ‘How does that work ?’, “that’s ok until about lunchtime, then I fancy something savoury, so I have this or whatever and so it goes on” and I say ‘well that must cost you a fair bit’, “yes, just going to work I spend about £8 a day on just bits, then at night I get home and have another meal, it’s quite expensive”. So I say ‘wouldn’t it be good if there were something that didn’t allow you to crave and you felt good, because how do you feel with all that ?’, “Well, fairly sluggish, actually I’m tired, feel sleepy at work, get home have something to eat and fall asleep in front of the television”, they admit.

‘What would you say if I told you there was something on the market that could ensure that you didn’t go to sleep during the day, didn’t feel hungry and was cheaper ?’, I ask, “That would be fantastic“. ‘Well I know of a product that is going to cost you less than £3 a day, is going to give you two meals a day, three lots of vitamins and minerals your body needs and you can still have a nice meal in the evening. If you add the tea drink as well, which is not like these energy drinks you get so that you’ll not have a tummy ache and all the rest of it, you could get two hours an evening more alertness than you get at the moment, how does that sound ?’, and not surprisingly they reply “sounds wonderful, what is it ?”. It’s a product that I take myself, because my life used to be very much like yours, I was very sceptical took it to see if it worked and I was amazed, I’d never felt better. Personally I had a lot of digestive issues, that used to be one of the things I dreaded, because I knew if I had a big meal I’d regret it for the next two or three hours. Since I’ve been taking these products I don’t suffer any more. They make it in a range of flavours; vanilla, tropical fruit, strawberry, cappuccino, chocolate, even cookies & cream.  There are a lot of people with various food intolerances, various foods they can’t eat, so the vanilla flavour also comes in a ‘free-from’ variety which is suitable for people with allergies as it has been developed from pea protein and that is an amazing product as it is suitable for people with any intolerance at all.

Find out more about these products; Herbalife’s Formula 1 and Formula 1 Free-From at the Gift of Health and the Gift of Health online shop now.

One of the misconceptions  about getting your weight and health in good shape is where people hear about diets that don’t give you the full range of nutrition. For example, there is a lot of talk about a ‘carb-free diet’, which is frequently mentioned in the media, people talking about how they’ve been on a carb-free diet and had great results. The reality is if you have a truly carb-free diet, you’d die, because carbohydrates is the fuel that your body needs. It saves the body using your proteins to survive. Proteins you need to build your muscles, repair yourself, but the energy source your body needs comes from carbohydrates, it’s the type of carbohydrates that people have that’s important, for instance the only energy source that your brain uses is carbohydrates, it can’t get any energy from protein. So, what you’re looking for is carbohydrates that are not made of refined sugars. Instead you’re looking for wholemeal or whole grain type proteins, products with fibre in, or even better a selection of all of them. To simplify that, you back to a calorie, everything that you put in your mouth has a calorific value of some sort, the ones that are made up of refined sugars, such as white flours and refined sugar products, cakes and sweets, simplistic breakfast cereals have got a value of practically zero, because it’s just got sugar in it. What you’re looking for are ones with fibre, protein and micro and macro nutrients in it. Feed your body with products that may have a higher calorific value, but while they may have a higher calorific value, however they are full of other things and may be a better option. For example, if you prefer blueberries to crunchy nut cornflakes. Blueberries have a higher calorific value, but the blueberries have all the anti- oxidants and fibre that your body needs, so it’s a trade-off, this is what many people do not understand, so you can’t survive on just eating protein.

A good example of this was the Atkins diet where people were encourage to eat protein from an animal source, in large quantities, sausages, steak and things like this. All the body does is react in a certain way to begin with because it’s been a shock to the system, but then it starts packing the weight on. It doesn’t matter how much protein you eat, the body can only absorb 25g per meal. If you eat a mountain of sausages and steaks for breakfast, your body just wants to get rid of it because it can’t absorb it all. On that point it’s interesting to mention that your body can’t store the things it really needs. It can’t store protein, can’t store fibre and can’t store the micro/macro nutrients you need to survive.  It can store, with unlimited capacity, carbohydrates, which is fat and therefore you can eat all the foods with high calorific values made of refined sugar and you’ll pack it on as fat. Sadly, all the things your body needs, you can’t store, hence the importance of feeding your body three to five times a day and that is the key. So cutting food out is not going to result in you becoming healthy or losing weight.

If cutting food out is not going to make your healthy or lose weight, what food should you be eating ? Find out more tomorrow.