Recommended Reading
The Mediterranean Diet
A Fundamental Guide to Using the Mediterranean Diet
for Improved Health, Weight Loss, Reducing the Risk
of Heart Disease, Blood Pressure & Common Allergies
The Mediterranean Diet – Lose Weight Fast With the Real Med Diet
Although there are many countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, one country in particular has a diet that is known to maintain a healthy heart, keep the adherents trim and in good form, is anti-aging, and tastes great.
This is the Grecian classic Mediterranean diet
Sadly the modern Greeks have turned their backs on the traditional fare, and now eat a lot of junk food, restaurant meals, and a heavy reliance on saturated fats.
The traditional Greek Mediterranean diet, found in the villages are no less than 60% fruit and vegetables, only 20% meats, 10% carbohydrates, and 10% fats. This means a diet rich in natural fiber, lots of vitamins and minerals, just the essential bread and other starches, and some daily dose of the magic Greek olive oil.
Typical Diet Greek Mediterranean diet
Breakfast. The Greek breakfast will always have fruit in season. If it’s the winter or spring there will be lots of citrus to choose from. Begin your breakfast with fresh fruit. You can choose from coffee or tea, but in the morning, the average Greek loves his coffee. This will be accompanied by some fresh bread (one slice…remember you are on a diet!), with some natural Greek honey. A traditional Greek cheese is also served, and this may be a Kasseri, or some local graveria. This whole break fast is less than 250 calories, and you will feel full and start your day off well.
Morning Snack. If you are hungry before lunch (and you may be, as Greeks will have lunch at about 14:00 to 15:00 hours), eat some more fruit. A good choice will be the wonderful Greek apple, available most of the year. Also a good morning snack is melon (only eat food that is in season in your area). Caloric value less than 100.
Lunch or the Greek Diner. The Greek kitchen is rich from a multitude of prepared meals. Try to select one that does not have meat and starch in the same mea. For example, you can eat spanakorizo (cooked spinach with rice), but no meat with it. Or, you can have a kokinosto (a Greek-type of goulash), but without potato. Have the meat with salads, other vegetables, or by itself. Follow with a dessert of fruit and cheese. No bread is allowed. The calories here will total no more than 500.
The Greek Supper. Many Greeks will try to have whatever was eaten at lunch, for diner. However, apply the same rules, meat with vegetables is ok, or starch with vegetables is ok…just do not mix your starches with protein. A good diner can be the legendary Greek paidakia (or lamb chops). Eat this with some boiled greens (the Greeks will eat horta or vela, two local herbs that seem to grow everywhere in the world) Have some sliced tomato, with some feta cheese (a typical Greek salad called the horyatika, salad of the villiger) and even some strong red wine. You will not have exceeded 600 calories here.
Re-cap. Having eaten like a Greek, but having separated your starches from meat, you will have eaten only 1400 calories, and you will have begun to lose weight. You will not be hungry
Tips. An old Roman saying is that if you lift up any rock, you will find a Greek under it. You cannot help but to find a local Greek grocery in your area. You can find all the Greek cheeses, and staples, especially their wonderful olive oil, and even fresh Greek bread. Speak to the owner of the shop and ask for a Greek cookbook, or you can be sure they will help you.
The only prohibition with the Greek Mediterranean diet is do not mix your protein and carbohydrates.
Meat and vegetables are fine. Pasta without meat sauce is fine. Try to keep your calories in the 1500 a day range and you will not only lose weight, you will find the Greek olive oil is like a medicine for your heart, and you whole system will clean up.
So there you have it -Follow the Greek Mediterranean diet and you look and feel better and lose weight.
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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sacha_Tarkovsky
Recommended Reading
The Mediterranean Diet
A Fundamental Guide to Using the Mediterranean Diet
for Improved Health, Weight Loss, Reducing the Risk
of Heart Disease, Blood Pressure & Common Allergies
Cholesterol - Mediterranean Diet Safer and More Effective Than Statins?
Researchers from Tufts Medical Center and the University of Bern recently published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal the results of a study that indicate cholesterol-lowering statin drugs may cause serious, long-term muscle damage that persists even after the drugs are halted.
It has been known for some time that weakness and aches in the muscles - known as myalgia - can occur in 10% to15% people taking statins and that more severe and persistent pain known as myopathy occurs in roughly 2 percent.
This writer can vouch that just two days into taking the statins I had been prescribed, I experienced the most dreadful muscle weakness and had to stop taking them. I switched instead to a handling using diet and became over the ensuing months as fit as a fiddle as a result. I recall thinking at the time that if these drugs are doing this after two days, what are they going to do to me after two years of taking them?
In the aforementioned study, the researchers carried out muscle biopsies on a total of 83 patients. Of that 83, 44 were or had recently been taking statins and were also suffering from myopathy so severe as to interfere with their daily activities. Out of that 44, 29 were currently taking statins, while the remaining 15 had been using them but had discontinued taking them at least three weeks earlier.
Another 19 of the total of 83 people that participated in the study were taking statins but not suffering from myopathy, while the final 20 had never experienced myopathy and never taken statins.
Researchers found signs of muscle damage in 25 of the myopathy patients, including the majority of those who had already stopped taking statins.
Researchers do not know why statin use can lead to myopathy in some patients, although they do know that certain factors may raise that risk. Such factors include high doses of the statin drugs, old age, vigorous exercise or taking certain other drugs along with the statins, and these include some cancer drugs and antibiotics.
However that may be, this association of statins with muscle weakness cannot but be cause for concern because the heart is also a muscle!
Cholesterol is made in the liver and statins work to lower cholesterol by blocking the chemical pathway in the liver that makes it. But that same pathway also makes something called co-enzyme Q10 (CoQ10). CoQ10 is key to the process of making energy in all the major muscles - including the heart. The heart evidently uses a big amount of CoQ10 and there is a correlation between the severity of heart failures in people who have the lowest CoQ10 levels.
This reduction of CoQ10 levels, then, may well be the cause of the muscle weakness. The other functions of CoQ10 (such as the stabilization of cell membranes) may be behind other Adverse Drug Reactions (ADR) reported for statins, such as gastrointestinal upsets, liver problems, cataracts, loss of memory and peripheral nerve damage.
Thus, if you are on statins, one way you can help yourself is to supplement CoQ10 - discuss this with a qualified nutritionist. Most doctors will not be useful as so few of them appear to know much about nutrition - bizarre as that may sound!
However, you may want to know how the taking of statins compares with a dietary approach to bringing down cholesterol levels.
A study published in 2002 compared the results obtained on patients taking statins with patients put on a so-called "Mediterranean diet." After four years, those on the Mediterranean diet showed a 70 percent lowered incidence of heart disease, which was three times better than the reduction achieved in the group taking statins.
In 2005 another study involved 74 000 people and using a points system for how much fish, grains and so forth they were eating. The study found that for every 2 points they got closer to the perfect Mediterranean diet, their chances of dying within a periods set by the trial went down by 8% and people on the full diet cut their chances of dying during that set period by an impressive 40%.
If you want to keep your heart healthy, then, one of the best things you can do is switch to a Mediterranean diet |(fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, fish, beans, seeds, nuts, olive oil and dairy products such as yogurt in modest amounts.)
Alongside this I recommend you supplement Wild Blue-Green Algae and drink plenty of water and about four or five cups of green tea a day, instead of coffee.
There is an awful lot one can do without having to take drugs and suffer their side effects, although if there is a serious cholesterol/heart problem or you have any, make sure you undertake a program to correct the problem under the guidance of a very competent nutritionist or a medical doctor who understands nutrition.
About the Author
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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kieron_Mcfadden
Recommended Reading
The Mediterranean Diet
A Fundamental Guide to Using the Mediterranean Diet
for Improved Health, Weight Loss, Reducing the Risk
of Heart Disease, Blood Pressure & Common Allergies
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