Lose Weight By Drinking Water

It's still the New Year and you still have a chance to lose weight. One way to lose weight is to increase your intake of water and decrease your intake of any type of beverage with a carbohydrate in it. According to the Obesity Society of the United States, a study has shown that dieters who have the discipline to exchange their sugary drinks or carbonated diet drinks with water instead will lose an additional five pounds a year. Furthermore, ff you simply manage to drink 16 ounces or more glasses of water a day even without cutting out your sugary or carbonated drinks you will still lose two pounds a day.

In the past all kinds of diet programs have always recommended drinking plenty of water but this was the first study known of by the society to actually support this theory that 'drinking water causes weight loss.'

In this study, weight loss researchers compared 240 dieting woman with each other. The women, who were aged 25 to 50 were all on different diets such as the Atkins Diet, The Zone and the South Beach diet. One thing that all of these diet programs have in common by the way is that they limit the amount of calories that a person can consume a day.

Before the women begun their diets they were instructed by the researchers to drink two cans of sugary drinks a day (that would amount to being about 200 calories for each woman.) This included beverages like soda pop and juice. Then during the course of the study, some of the women replaced these calories with water. The two groups, the water-drinkers and the sugary beverage drinkers, were then compared in terms of how much weight they lost over a period of a year.

The water and weight loss study found that the dieting women who replaced all of their sweetened drinks with water lost five pounds more in a year then women who continued to drink the sugary drinks. Women who drank more than four cups of water a day lost an additional 2 pounds more than women who did not increase their water intake at all.

It doesn't matter if you drink bottled water, bubbly water or tap water. The idea is to displace those sugary beverages with as much water as you possibly can in a day. Not only does this limit calories it is also healthy for you in other ways.

Not only does being properly hydrated help your muscles and metabolism work at their best, but drinking a large volume of water also helps prevent you from snacking because you feel full. It is recommended that you drink at least eight cups of water a day to optimize your weight loss.

To remain in the best of health, especially while you are losing weight, it is important for your body to remain properly hydrated. This is because two thirds of our total body weight is made up of water.

Just What is Pesto?

Since I wrote my first blog on pesto a few months ago some people have been asking me exactly what it is. Just what is pesto? 

Well, first of all it is a sauce. The basic ingredients of pesto sauce are common to all these recipes: fresh basil leaves, cheese (either Parmigiano Reggiano or Pecorino), pine nuts or walnuts, garlic, olive oil and salt and pepper. The great debate, and the great fun, about pesto is deciding on the proper proportions with which to combine these ingredients and whether to add any extras. Ultimately, with some experimentation, you can make pesto that suits your tastes exactly.  

Traditionally, pesto sauce is made by hand with a mortar and pestle. Fortunately, we have food processors and blenders, which make the job much easier. Save your energy for other things, like making fresh pasta to go with the pesto.

Pesto can be applied to just about any shape of pasta and other ingredients can be included. Pesto is also excellent in many soups, from vegetable soups such as minestrone. Pine nuts are actually the seeds produced by certain varieties of pine tree; they are found on the pine cones, where they are covered by a hard shell. There are several varieties of pine trees that produce pine nuts, including the umbrella pine or stone pine. Most edible pine nuts grow in Southern Europe, particularly Italy and France, although some also grow in Spain, Portugal, and the southern United States. 

The greatest exponent of monounsaturated fat is olive oil, and it is a prime component of any pesto. Olive oil is a natural juice, which preserves the taste, aroma, vitamins and properties of the olive fruit. Olive oil is the only vegetable oil that can be consumed as it is – freshly pressed from the fruit. Furthermore you can't beat pesto in terms of nutrition. Basil contains iron, calcium, Vitamin A, dietary fiber, magnesium, Vitamin A and calcium. 

Basil also contains the antioxidants that protect human cells against disease and pollution. Basil also contains estragole, linalool, cineole, eugenol, sabinene, myrcene, and limonene, which are antibacterial agents that protect against bacteria such as Listeria monocytogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli Yersinia enterocolitica, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Basil also contains cyclooxygenase that acts as an natural antinflammatory. Of course pesto is a good food for adults too.

The beneficial health effects of olive oil are due to both its high content of monounsaturated fatty acids and its high content of antioxidative substances. Studies have shown that olive oil offers protection against heart disease by controlling LDL (“bad”) cholesterol levels while raising HDL (the “good” cholesterol) levels. (1-3) No other naturally produced oil has as large an amount of monounsaturated as olive oil -mainly oleic acid.  Pine nuts contain alpha-lineolic acid, which is an amino acid responsible for keeping all of the other amino acids in the body working smoothly together. 

The cheese in pesto is also a high source of calcium.  An added bonus?  The garlic in it prevents kids from getting sick. The best thing about pesto is that many kids seem to really love it, especially if you put it on pizza or on top of spaghetti and call it something like monster spaghetti.Â