In ancient Aztec times chocolate or ‘Cacao’ was sacred and was associated with fertility and love. It was considered a food for the gods and was used as currency.
Now, why do I call it Cacao and not Cocoa? Raw cacao is the unprocessed bean used to make cocoa powder.  Cocoa powder is processed and some of the natural fats are removed.

The beans from the cacao tree contain powerful antioxidants that are known to help eliminate deadly free radicals from your body.  In fact, CACAO has the highest ORAC antioxidant rating per 100g, way in front of Acai berries or Goji berries.

Raw cacao has shown to be effective in promoting mental well being through the production of endorphins.  It also acts as anti-depressant by raising serotonin levels.  Cacao is a complete food.  In fact, cacao is the #1 source for magnesium, used in hundreds of metabolic processes.

Cacao is a also a rich source of:
Iron – which fights back anemia
Zinc – Helps with Immune System
Vitamin C – Is a Super Medicine
Fiber – Cleanses digestive system
Cardiovascular cleansing compounds – Reduces the risk of blood clotting
Chromium – Balances blood sugar levels
Manganese – Formation of haemoglobin

So what’s the problem with our modern day chocolate? I’ll tell you what it is!
It’s the pounds of white refined sugar and pasteurized homogenized milk that’s added to it.
White sugar is a very harsh carbohydrate that acts as a drug causing your hormone levels to spike.  Pasteurized homogenized milk comes from thousands of cows. Some of them sick and most of them treated with antibiotics and growth hormones.
But there is a better way to make your own chocolate at home. This is a chocolate that’s super-healthy and actually melts pounds causing rapid fat loss.  Read more about it HERE!

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In this consumer awareness presentation you’ll discover the truth about body fat and why we have cravings…

It seems that more and more scientists are discovering that your common burgers and fries, the kind of junk food everybody eats from time to time are as addictive as hard drugs. weight loss truth.

Look at this article from 28 October 2009 that says cakes and sausages will program your brain into craving more foods…

Here’s another article from 29 Mar 2010 that reports that junk food is as addictive as smoking or taking drugs and could cause compulsive eating and obesity.

You probably already know that the global obesity rate is steadily on the rise for men, children and women alike. Could there be any link? Could it be that the extremely harsh refined carbohydrates from sugar and white bread are the things causing this alarming rise in obesity??

Let’s look at what happens when your blood sugar spikes after eating white bread and drinking soft drinks…

After a sugary meal…. your blood glucose levels spike…. which triggers the pancreas to start producing insulin…. which in turn lowers blood sugar levels..

There are a number of problems with this process, all of which contribute to weight gain:

Problem #1: Insulin is a hormone that stores carbohydrate calories in the form of fat,

Problem #2: Insulin tells the body not to release any stored fats to use as energy,

Problem #3: Insulin inhibits other important hormones in your body, one of which is responsible for burning fat and calories and the other is none other than the human growth hormone.

Problem #4: Insulin also causes hunger by reducing your blood sugar levels in only a couple hours after the sugary meal.

Can you see a pattern forming? First you eat a sugary meal… Then insulin gets released within your body to lower your blood sugar levels… Once your blood sugar levels are lowered, it causes you to crave more food… And naturally when you crave food…  You Eat!

This vicious cycle is caused by refined carbohydrates found in sugar and white bread.

On the flip side, if you restrict the number of calories you eat you naturally begin to feel tired, hungry and deprived.  This is the main reason why diets fail.  But unfortunately people blame themselves for not having enough will power.

The truth is that weight loss has little to do with will power. What you need is the right information.

For a free video presentation on how to burn fat faster and stop insulin spikes just look HERE!

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Are you ready for one of the biggest myths in the weight loss industry?
Here it is: It’s the fat in our diets that is making us fat!

This common mistake is far from true. The fact is, your body needs fat to burn fat. Your brain’s fatty cells also need fats in your diet. Fats are a source of energy; they provide the building blocks for membranes and a variety of hormones and are carriers for vitamins and mineral help with absorption.
 
Not all fats are good, that’s for sure.  There are both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ fats and the most important thing is to be able to differentiate between the two. As a general rule, good fats are mono-unsaturated, polyunsaturated and saturated fats.

Mono-Unsaturated Fats = GOOD
Some good sources of mono-unsaturated fats include peanuts, almonds and avocados which are all great for you.

Poly-Unsaturated Fats = GOOD
Good sources of poly-unsaturated fats are walnuts, salmon, trout and sunflower seeds.

Saturated Fats = GOOD
Good sources of saturated fats can be found in Diary and poultry.

Bad fats are ‘trans fats’ (which are linked to cancer). Make sure you read the label of food and avoid anything that says “hydrogenated”. These bad fats lower your HDL (good cholesterol) and increase your LDL (bad cholesterol), they clog arteries, cause insulin resistance and contribute to diabetes.

    Trans Fats = BAD
    Food with high content of ‘trans fats’ include deep fried foods like chips and so on.

The important thing know is that you need to add healthy oils in your diet like sesame oil, sunflower oil and virgin olive oil. You probably know about the tremendous benefits of virgin olive oil.

There’s also flax-seed oil which provide your body with Omega 3 acids. Flax-seed oil helps lower cholesterol and blood triglycerides and prevents clots in arteries. It protects against high blood pressure, inflammation, water retention (an important part in any weight loss plan), the list goes on.

But there’s one ‘oil’ that’s better than everything else listed above when you want to lose a lot of weight fast

To discover what this super-healthy oil is, and how you can lose weight with it, check out the free video presentation right HERE!

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If you have been trying to lose weight for any amount of time you know that there are some things you just have to do to be successful. Among those thing, are exercising, eating right, and getting enough sleep each night. Another big one is counting calories. Many dieters struggle with counting calories, because it can be so tedious, and you have measure your food after all. Let me share with you, a very simple way for you to monitor your calories everyday of the week.

If you have been counting calories for awhile, you will start to build a knowledge database of foods and how many calories they contain. This is great because you know exactly how many calories a food contains without looking at the label. How would you like to know exactly how many calories all the food you eat all week contain? Here is a real simple way of monitoring your calories that many models, athletes, and bodybuilders use.

At the beginning of each week you will do all of your grocery shopping and cooking. All of it! This way you will have meals ready to go for the entire week. This helps you prevent cheating on your diet and eliminates the excuses of not having food or wanting to cook. Also, this solves the calorie counting problem. Simply portion out your food at the beginning of the week after it is cooked and figure out how many calories it has. You can then make a label and stick it on your container.

This simple yet effective method will make dieting so much easier. In addition, I bet you will actually lose more weight. I say this because many people actually underestimate calories when they are really hungry, so that they can eat more. You won’t have that option following this method.

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The first and most important thing you should do with regards to weight loss when you pick up any food or beverage item from the shelf is to study the label. Not the pretty picture of how great the food looks on a designer studio plate, or the blurb about how you simply must buy this great product. No, you need to read the label on the back that has all the boring ingredient and nutritional information!

This is the part where you discover if all the claims made on the glossy front of the label are true or just hype. It may come as no great surprise to learn that most products on the supermarket shelves are in all truthfulness just hype, sugar, salt, fat and artificial flavourings, colourings, preservatives and very little in the way of actual nutrition! This is the part of shopping that clever consumers get to beat a food industry that is interested only in their money, not their health.

For the shopper who seriously wants to lose weight, by reading the ingredients first, you will soon learn what to put into your shopping basket, or shove straight back on the shelf like a hot potato. To be in with a chance of weight loss, you should also check serving sizes when working out the calories in foods. The main health offenders that should be avoided are:

Artificial Sweeteners

These foods will usually contain Aspartame or Sorbitol. These days, Saccharin has such a bad press with links to cancer that most manufacturers opt for one or both of the first two. But don’t buy anything that contains them. They are bad for your health in many ways, but from a weight loss perspective they fool you into thinking you are hungry, so you will eat more and gain weight.

Artificial Flavours

These usually include monosodium glutamate which is linked with stomach cancer. Being a flavour enhancer, you are more likely to eat more of the product containing it and gain weight. Whether you are on a weight loss program of not, if you see this ingredient printed on the label, think twice about buying it!

Artificial Colours

These are not so much a problem for people trying to lose weight, but some of them can cause an imbalance in the way the brain produces some hormones and certainly leads to hyperactivity in children. A hyperactive child will eat far more than they need and you can potentially end up with obese kids. For this reason, you should avoid buying food containing artificial colours.

This might sound like you have to bypass 90 percent of what is on supermarket shelves if you want to lose weight and be healthy and unfortunately you’d be right. It doesn’t mean you have to starve, but it does mean you have to shop clever to provide yourself and your family with a balanced, healthy diet. After all, who wants to stare weight gain and obesity in the face just to make a bunch of food manufacturers rich?

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But there are some things we may not know about obesity that new findings have revealed. Recent studies have been able to link obesity to insomnia, and vice versa. If you do not get proper sleep, you may be susceptible to weight gain. The reason many people don’t get enough sleep is stress, lack of proper diet or exercise, and prescription medications that may keep them awake.

It is important to get a good night of sleep each and every night. This is important for children and adults. Many adults get less than five hours of sleep per night, Not only does sleeping properly improve mood and brain function, but it also helps people to stay thinner. The reason for this is not completely known, but recent studies have found that lack of sleep causes an increase in something called cortisol, a stress related hormone.

Cortisol can prevent the body from burning fat and calories, and can be the cause of weight gain. It also causes insulin resistance, which is another contributor to weight gain. Too much cortisol in the system can increase belly fat and other fatty areas of the body. By getting enough sleep at night, people can help to prevent the over abundance of cortisol in their body.

There are diet pills in the market that are designed to help decrease cortisol, but most doctors agree that nothing compares to a good night of sleep each and every night. This is the best way to keep the cortisol production at bay.

Other studies have also recently shown that lack of sleep creates chemicals in the brain that increase hunger. When you are hungrier during the day, you’re obviously more inclined to eat more, and often eat less healthy. Overeating combined with a poor diet will most certainly cause people to gain weight. This can be a vicious cycle for those who suffer from insomnia or other sleep disorders.
Lack of sleep makes dieting even more difficult. People who get more sleep per night tend to have a more stable mood, better coordination, and are often more productive at work. While getting a good night’s sleep is not a guarantee of weight loss, not getting enough can hinder your weight loss goals.

The side effects from obesity can make sleeping even more difficult, so as part of any weight loss program, it’s a good idea to include making sleep a priority.

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Bread has been a part of our staple diet for centuries, so it might seem the most natural thing in the world that you should eat bread on a daily basis as part of your normal, everyday diet. What a lot of people don’t know is that the most prevalent form of bread, the common white, sliced loaf, is actually bad for your health and also bad for anyone who is trying to lose weight. So why is this so? More importantly, what can you do to improve your diet when this important staple that you have become so used to is suddenly off the menu?

The first thing you need to know is that while bread has been a way of life for centuries, it is only more recently that it has become bad for you. It all started when the milling process that is employed to grind the wheat into the powdery flour we are used to, became further refined. In the mid 20th century, millers found a way to cheaply remove the important part of the wheat, the bran or outer husk which enabled them to produce a finished product that is bleached white, much finer and useful for making fine cakes and pastries. It also became widely used in making bread that looked clean and homogenous meaning more people would buy it. Before this, all bread was made from the far healthier, whole grain flour.

The refined white flour that is used to make your daily white, sliced loaf contains no useful nutrients or dietary fibre. These important ingredients are contained in the wheat bran which is not present in white flour. A white loaf of bread is not only devoid of any nutrients but it is high in bad LDL (low density lipoprotein) cholesterol and starchy high GI (glycemic index) carbohydrates. These carbohydrates are converted by the body into sugars that flood into the bloodstream and cause a rush of energy, followed by a rapid depletion leading to sluggishness and tiredness. The bad news for those trying to lose weight is that it also slows the metabolism, which leads to more fat being stored in the body. That fat generally gravitates to the belly area, hence the problems with belly fat experienced by people who eat a lot of white bread and other white flour derived products, such as white pasta, cakes, biscuits, pastries etc.

For those who want to lose weight, white bread and other white flour products should be avoided. The good news is that there are tasty and wholesome alternatives in products made from whole grain flour. These include wholemeal bread, wholemeal pasta and cakes, biscuits and cookies that are also made from wholemeal flour. The body deals with wholemeal four based foods differently, as they contain all the nutrients from the wheat plus dietary fibre which is essential for a healthy digestive system. They contain more good HDL (high density lipoprotein) cholesterol than bad and the carbohydrates are high GI, meaning they release sugars into the bloodstream slowly, keeping your blood sugar levels more consistent. Wholemeal flour also boosts your metabolism meaning your body will store less fat and burn calories faster, helping you to lose weight more easily. Making the switch to wholemeal flour based staples a sort of win-win situation for your health and your weight!

Products made from wholemeal flour can be found in stores, although you are better off making them yourself. If you are not adept in the kitchen, then it’s a good time make friends with someone who is! You will benefit in many ways, they’ll help you to lose weight and they taste a whole lot better too!

 Do You Want To Know The Biggest Loser Diets Secrets? Then Click Here!

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When you have taken the decision to start a weight loss program of your choice, you may be tempted to keep it to yourself. This is a common enough desire, especially when you actually need to lose weight for health reasons rather than wanting to shed a few pounds to look good for a forthcoming event. However, is keeping this to yourself really the best policy? We look at why it is often a better idea to involve family members and even friends in your attempts at weight loss.

At first, the very idea of telling anyone that you are overweight and need to lose weight might seem an embarrassing and guilt laden process. That’s quite normal, as after all, no one wants to admit they have not been looking after themselves properly to the extent that they now have to take action to correct it. It’s tantamount to admitting failure and that is something most of us prefer to keep to ourselves.

Think about it from a different angle. When you involve people who are close to you in your weight loss strategy, you suddenly surround yourself with support. When you are supported by people who are looking out for you in any venture, you improve your chances of success drastically.

Therefore, by going public with your intended plan to lose weight, you have valuable support from people who will not only give you encouragement, but will be there to pick you up if you fall. By that I mean that if you have a bad day and are tempted to give up, a friendly face and an encouraging word might be enough to keep you positive and motivated.

By involving other people in your proposal, you make yourself accountable for your actions because your friends or family will know what you’re doing. This makes it that much harder to give up, because you don’t want to disappoint anybody and therefore will be more inclined to want to show them that you are determined to succeed. This in itself is a great motivator.

In addition to this, you get to find out who has already been through the process and they can steer you through the obstacles that they encountered, making it even easier for you to achieve your weight loss goal. This has a knock on effect of inspiring some of those friends or family members to join you in doing the same thing. Now you not only have their support, but you can work together to mutually overcome all the things that get in the way of the vast majority of people who are attempting to lose weight.

So you can see that by going public about losing weight, you not only enlist the support of the people that you confide in, but you may also end up with some weight loss buddies who will provide mutual motivation to see it through to its success. This is in stark contrast to trying to go it alone and running the risk of failure for the want of having a simple word or two of encouragement just when you need it most.

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It’s quite incredible to think of how many thousands of people, every single day, make the difficult decision to lose weight. Some do it from sheer necessity. Others do it for the sake of vanity. Still others do it because they want to be healthy and live longer. The sad part is that the vast majority of these people will fail at their first attempt at weight loss. What is worse is they may likely end up gaining even more weight to compensate for their failure.

Whatever your reasons for deciding to lose weight, there are five, very useful as well as very important facts that you should know about weight loss if you want to ensure that you don’t fail. Here we will outline these five essential facts which will greatly improve your chances of success.

1. Weight loss is as much a state of mind as it is a physical action designed to reduce your calorie intake while increasing the rate at which your body burns calories. After all, the human body has this great design with a built-in program that is supposed to regulate its weight and muscle to fat ratio. When we knock that program out of balance by eating too many foods that we are not designed to easily digest while depriving our bodies of the natural exercise they are designed to do, we gain weight. A simple shift in the way we live, by eating more of the right foods and doing sufficient exercise, brings that program back into balance and our bodies regain their correct weight and fitness levels.

2. Trying to lose weight too fast by over zealous exercising can actually be counter productive in most people, unless you are a trained athlete of course. That’s because we are not naturally built for such rigorous training and can place ourselves at risk of injury, which will force us to stop exercising completely. If that happens, the weight will soon creep back on again.

3. By trying to lose weight too fast by crash dieting can not only be counter productive, it can be downright dangerous to our health. By withholding essential nutrients and fibre from our diets, we place our bodies at risk from infection and illness that an otherwise healthy body would easily be able fight off. Being incapacitated by illness is a sure way to gain weight, even if we are not eating very much because our bodies are not burning many calories through immobility.   

4. Approaching weight loss with a consistent and leisurely pace brings many benefits. It’s always best to begin any exercise program slowly and then gradually pick up the pace as your body gets used to the additional work.

5. If you consume more calories, through food and drink, than you burn off through exercise, you will gain weight. There is no argument about this and no matter what you say, hear or believe, the simple fact remains you cannot gain weight unless you eat more than your body is able to burn off. This makes it a simple case of making it your mission to reduce your intake of calories through food and drink, while increasing the amount of calories you burn off through exercise in order to lose weight.

Being in possession of these five pieces of pure gold will make your bid for successful weight loss a far more positive one that it may have been without them.

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 We humans, as a race, have been blessed by having a keen sense of taste. That sense means we can tell the difference between things that are sweet, salty, acid and sour. In our ancestors’ days this meant they stood a good chance of staying alive and not eating any poisonous plants, which tended to be sour to the taste. As we have evolved into our 21st century civilization, this blessing has also become a curse to millions of people who have become overweight because of our liking for things that taste sweet.

Because of this preference for sweet tasting foods, the food industry is falling over itself to ensure that their stuff tastes sweet. This has led to the fact that refined sugar or sugar substitutes are present in nearly all processed or pre-packaged foods these days. It’s not because the food industry has your best interests at heart, either. They’re certainly not interested in helping you to lose weight. It’s all because this is how they can sell you more of their products.

If you want to lose weight but are still eating and drinking foods and beverages that are loaded with sugar or sugar substitutes, then its time to take stock of your diet. It is now law that all packaged foods and drinks must be correctly labelled with their ingredients as well as nutritional information. What it doesn’t yet do is force the industry to tell you exactly how much refined sugar or sugar substitutes are in those foods and drinks.

Sugar is a combination of several substances that the body can digest, but the main ones that dieters need to be interested in are sucrose, fructose, and glucose. Sucrose comes in several forms, but the most common is white, refined sugar. This is produced predominantly from the raw, sweet black molasses that are found in sugar cane. Fructose and glucose are the result of the breakdown of sucrose and are more easily assimilated into the body.

In food, sugar can take one of two major forms. The first is intrinsic sugars, which are the natural fruit sugars contained within the cell structure of the food itself and is naturally found in fresh fruits and vegetables. The second is extrinsic sugars which are not found within the cell structure of the food itself and include two groups. These are milk sugars which are found in milk and milk products such as cheese, butter and yoghurt. The other is the one that should interest those actively trying to lose weight. They are known as non-milk extrinsic sugars which are added to food. It is these added sugars that cause the majority of weight gain and obesity in the Western diet.

Sugar that is added to food has many names, which is a deliberate method of labelling designed to throw most average people off the scent. It can be labelled as sugar, sucrose, dextrose, dextrin, honey, maple syrup, corn syrup, molasses, fruit juice concentrate, modified corn starch, or just plain sweetener. Recognise some of them? Sure you do!

If you want to lose weight, you need to avoid or at least cut back drastically on foods and drinks with any of these ingredients printed on the label. If you need sweet things, try to develop a taste for fresh fruit as the sugars in these are a whole lot better for you than the other kind!

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