Lose It! — November 01, 2017

Health news

LOW CARB

PHOTOGRAPHS: GALLO IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES

lowdown

HERE’S TO YOUR VERY GOOD HEALTH!

BY ANNA RICH

3 proven ways

to lose weight

(besides eating

low carb)

The former director of the US

Center for Nutrition Medicine,

Dr George Blackburn, worked with

overweight and obese people for

decades. He found that these three

simple weight loss tools really work:

1 Eat the same-sized meal at breakfast,

lunch and supper

Most of us eat very little at breakfast and pile

our plates at dinner. Even it out!

2 Put in enough hours of sleep

Study after study has shown that getting too

little sleep ups your risk of being overweight.

3 Hop on that scale often

Dr Blackburn advocated that you track your

weight daily, but some say weekly weigh-ins work

better. Either way, studies show that if you weigh

yourself often, you’re more likely to lose weight.

When you hear that most men in the US and Europe

could be infertile by 2060, you have to wonder what’s

going on. There are myriad factors at play (stress, diet,

alcohol, smoking...) but another multi-faceted issue is

the increased environmental pollution of water, air and

food. The Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology journal

says many chemicals used everywhere in the world are

endocrine disruptors, which means they mimic natural

hormones and stop them acting normally. (Of course

this applies to women, too.) In Europe, the use of hor-

mones is prohibited. Our local, independent Food Advisory

Consumer Service says almost all abbatoir meat in SA

is produced with the aid of hormones (which speeds up

the rate at which cattle reach slaughter weight) but that

these levels are highly regulated. Check their website

(foodfacts.org.za) for comparisons of hormone levels in

500g of food, but we’ve picked out one or two: raw cab-

bage has 12ug; eggs, 7.5ug; beer, 0.078ug; and beef,

0.007ug. Obviously you need to consider the quantities

you’re likely to consume, but if you’re worried about beef,

you’d do well to worry about the beer too... And they say

birth control pills contain between 30 and 350ug, btw.

IS OUR MEAT SAFE?

TAKE

AN HOUR...

The holidays are coming,

which means you might

have a bit more time on

your hands – time to get

moving, that is! A lovely

way to do this is to

join the parkrun event

nearest you. In South

Africa, there are 14 027

options to date. They’re

all exactly five kays, in

very lovely surround-

ings, and happen every

Saturday without fail, at

8am. And you can walk!

Take the kids along too.