Good morning everyone! I hope everyone is still in holiday mood.

Today I would like to share with you my concerns about clean and balanced eating as a healthy habit.

Many of you probably are still on holidays, or just after. Over this period we all forget about clean and balanced eating, trying all different sorts of food. It is always good to try something new and not to think about nutrition or healthy benefits. How many of you gain the weight? It will be hard work to lose it. Thinking about strict diet? Not good idea. One of the best ways to achieve weight loss is by adopting and maintaining a balanced diet. It may not be the easiest approach, but it is certainly the most sustainable. A balanced diet provides your body with the vital nutrients it needs to build and maintain healthy cells, tissues and organs, which are crucial for proper growth and development. It includes a variety of foods, such as fresh vegetables and fruits, legumes, nuts, whole grains, lean meats, fish, unsaturated oils and low-fat dairy foods. It doesn’t include processed and refined foods that can undermine health.

Two months ago I shared with you my partner’s problem with high bad cholesterol. We have change his eating habits. His balanced diet has been boosted with herbal supplements and superfoods for lowering cholesterol and the last results showed it worked very well for him!

Maintaining a balanced diet contributes also to weight loss, because you will be consuming the amount of calories, fat and cholesterol that is appropriate for your body. Combined with exercise, it is the only natural way with long results and no ‘yo-yo’ effects. When figuring out what foods to eat, you’ll also need to pay attention to those that inhibit weight loss. Junk foods like chips, cookies, ice cream and cakes should probably hit the garbage bin. These foods are high in cholesterol, fat, sugar and salt, all of which lack nutrition and do not promote weight loss. Soda is another prime culprit, which can add as much as 500 extra calories to your diet a day when drunk regularly. Reduce high-fat meats, which slows down your digestive tract.

Creating a balanced diet for weight loss requires that you make a menu for the foods you’ll eat on any given day. For breakfast, you might want to eat a low-fat yogurt and a piece of fruit, some whole-grain toast or a bowl of cereal topped with chopped strawberries. Lunch might be a tuna sandwich with light mayo, dill pickle relish, tomato, lettuce and whole-grain bread with some fresh fruit. Dinner could be salmon or chicken breast with roasted vegetables. At any given time throughout the day, a piece of fruit serves as a great snack, as do carrots and celery or whole-grain crackers. Finding variety when planning menus is the key to a balanced diet you can live with. Always remember to add superfoods. I add them to my breakfast smoothies! I do recommend natural herbal supplements:

Hoodia gordonii. This herb helps reduce cravings and allows you to cut calories without feelings of deprivation.

Damiana is a wild shrub native to the West Indies, Mexico, and Central America. It has a variety of uses, especially as a weight loss aid. This could be because of its effects on the digestive system, sometimes encouraging loose stools and the subsequent loss of water weight. However, one study showed that when paired with other herbs, damiana helped delay gastric emptying, which provided a sense of fullness for a longer period after eating.

Gymnema is herb native to Africa that has been used for centuries in Ayurvedic medicine. It is said to balance blood sugar levels. It is said to block sugar absorption and stop sugar cravings, a major contributor to some people’s weight problems.

Green Coffee Bean. A natural compound in green coffee bean-chlorogenic acid is shown to increase fat absorption and stop weight gain. A study of green coffee bean extract showed that those supplementing with green coffee bean lost an average of 17 pounds over a 12 week period.

Where to find these herbs? Some of these herbs are fairly common; you may even find them at your local grocery store. For others, you may need a specialty health food shop or trusted online retailer. You can also find them in my Healthy Essentials tab.

Enjoy your day everyone and thank you for reading!:)