7 Ways to Eat and Lose Weight

Many methods have been published as weight loss miracle workers but there is a very simple way to lose weight......tackle the source. How and What you eat determines how much weight you gain. Here are simple ways of losing that stubborn weight without dieting.
 
#1: Eat lots of fruit.
This means eating 5 different parts of fruit. You can take them together or separately. You can also make a smoothie or fruit juice from the fruits but do not remove the fibre in the fruit by squeezing out the juice. The fibre makes the fruit more filling and helps ease your digestion.

#2: Drink lots of water
Enough has been said on this tip. Water helps your metabolism and digestion. Improves blood flow and keeps you healthy. The most important point to note is that warm or hot water is more effective when you want to lose weight than cold water. Warm drinking water will make you lose weight faster.

#3: Eat more whole cereals
This includes brown rice, brown flour, enriched products. More beans, peas, green grams. These are an important source of protein and they pack less calories than meat. Polished cereals have a higher concentration of carbs than whole grains.

#4: Eat more white meat
This does not mean that you should completely forgo red meat but eating more fish, skinned chicken and sea food will go a long way to helping you lose those extra pounds. The vegetable portions should be twice as much as your meat and carbs too!

#5: Less cooking fat and more boiled food
This goes without saying. However if you have to use the cooking fat, the liquid oil is less likely to coat your arteries and accumulate around your organs.

#6: Eat smaller portions of food
The less you eat, the younger and thinner you look. This is a proven scientific fact. Your body can digest only so much food. The important thing to note is that you eat to fuel your body not to become full. Don't stop, the best is yet to come............

 #7: Snack more often
Don't jump for joy yet! Snack more nuts, carrots and dry fruits. This is to provide energy for your body and to keep you in an "unhungry" state. You are less likely to feel hungry if you snack often.

With these simple tips, you do not have to kill yourself to lose weight. Feel free to post more tips.   

A Simple Tea to Boost your Immunity

There are a variety of homemade teas and drinks that can boost your immunity and keep away any illnesses if taken once in a while. I will make a series of posts with these easy to make drinks for a healthier you. To start us off, ginger is a root with medicinal properties and is easily available at local markets.

The benefits of Ginger

• The strong ginger smell helps in opening up clogged respiratory tracts and can cure colds and increase immunity against tonsillitis, bronchitis and enteritis. 
• When combined with the vitamin C of lemons,the healing properties are enhanced and can help in suppressing cancers.
• It is an antiseptic and antibiotic

The taste of ginger on its stings so you can mix it with a few other ingredients to make teas and drinks in bulk that you can sip on slowly.

The Lemon and Ginger Malaysian tea
25 grams of peeled and sliced ginger
1 lemon squeezed
600ml water
Honey to taste

Place the ginger in a shallow pan and add the water.
Let it simmer for 20 minutes, covered
Add the lemon and honey.

This makes  2 servings.

If you have any more teas please feel free to add them.

Getting Rid of Eyebags Naturally

I find myself staying up later and later each day and the need to get rid of my eye bags has led me on a journey of discovery. Eye bags are caused by retention of water under the skin around the eyes mostly due to stress and lack of sleep. Some eye bags result from crying too much or an accumulation of toxins in the body.

Here are some of the ways I have tried and found really efficient.

1. Place two cold, sliced cucumbers over the eyes until they warm up

2. place two metallic spoons in the freezer overnight then press them to your eyes until they are warm. I found this a bit uncomfortable but the results were amazing. this works anytime you have eye bags.

3. Place cold wet tea bags over the eyes and lie down for about 15 minutes

4. Drinking lots of water during the day and before going to sleep.This detoxifies the body and reduces the inflammation around the eyes. Although this process takes longer, hydration will also solve other skin issues you may have.

5. The most common cause of eye bags is lack of sleep. Getting the recommended 8-10 hours of sleep will easily get rid of those eye bags.

There are still other options to explore if the eye bags are caused more by hereditary factors. there is a cosmetic surgery procedure; blepharopasty where extra tissue and fats are removed to reduce the puffiness and give a more youthful appearance.

Effectively Exfoliating Your Skin

Everyone knows how oils and dead skin are a horror for anyone trying to maintain smooth flawless skin. Maintaining smooth clean skin is mainly done through exfoliating using a facial mask or facial scrub. the problem with getting the chemically processed scrubs and facial masks is that you do not know which ingredient could worsen or improve your condition. To be on the safe side, using natural ingredients will save you the trouble of experimenting and some of the products backfiring on you just before an important occasion. The process will also cost less and save your quite some cash. Time should not be an excuse for not using natural facial products because you can make a weekly batch and refrigerate it for a week.

The area to focus on when exfoliating your face is the T-zone: your forehead, to your nose and I like to extend the focus to the chin. These areas have a lot of exposure to the elements of the atmosphere and are prone to dead skin and fat accumulation.

Tips for exfoliating 

• Scrubbing your face gently and in a circular manner is more effective for removing any oils lodged in the pores and removing the dead skin. 
• Do not scrub your face daily. This irritates the skin and may cause abrasions where bacteria may lodge in and cause black heads, red spots and pimples. Scrubbing once a week should be enough for all kinds of skin.
• Always wash your face before exfoliating your skin and wash off the scrub with warm water.

Some natural facial scrubs are:
1. Sugar and olive oilThis mixture is one of the easiest and most effective. Finely ground sugar is best to use to avoid any abrasions on the skin. The olive oil will rejuvenate and soothe the skin during the exfoliation process. Leave the paste on for 5 minutes then wash it out.

2. The Rice Scrub
This scrub can also work with oats. You can grind 3 tablespoons of rice manually or using a grinder. Mix the ground rice with some natural honey, a drop of olive oil and three drops of white vinegar. Mix the ingredients until they are consistent then apply to your face in circular motions. Leave the paste on your face for at least 15 minutes then wash out with lukewarm water.

3. Yoghurt and Honey
Mix equal parts of natural yoghurt and pure honey then spread the mixture on the face. Leave it on for 10 minutes then wash it out with lukewarm water.

When exfoliating the skin do not forget the neck and decolletage to get smooth and toned skin. If you have any more natural scrubs fell free to share them.

Maintaining Soft, Healthy Lips

It's the cold months once again and smiling in this cold is a task! first off, who wants to smile in the cold? Your face is frozen, no one is smiling around you so why should you smile? To make matters worse, who wants to smile back at you when its that cold? Not to mention the chapped lips whenever the temperatures dip. There are simple pocket friendly ways of transforming your lips and making them look great at all times of the year.

Tip #1
Do not lick your lips! Many harbor the notion that licking your lips is equal to naturally mosturising them. that is incorrect, in fact, it dries your lips. that is why the "lip-lickers" are constantly licking their lips. Not as moisturising as it seems.

Tip #2
Apply virgin olive oil on your lips before going to sleep, the restorative effects of that natural remedy will give you amazing results within a week of trying it. Virgin olive oil is available even at the retail shops in your neighbourhood so just try the remedy for a week and notice how amazing your lips will look. Vitamin E and A oil, sunflower oil and castor oil also works wonders.

Tip #3
Honey mixed with carrot juice applied on the lips for 5 minutes will naturally moisturise and tighten your skin. You can make a large batch to

Tip #4
To remove the dead skin from your lips, you can brush them using your soft bristled toothbrush gently. If you want to sooth your skin as you remove the dead skin, a mixture of sugar and olive oil rubbed against your spread lips will do the trick.


With this simple pocket friendly tips, you can turn your lips into eye catching wonders. These remedies cost little and can be stored in airtight containers for longevity. Enjoy the results in two weeks tops.

Post more home made remedies for fabulous lips.

Get your beauty sleep

Did you know that the more you sleep, the more attractive you look? Makes you want to sleep more right? So all this talk about beauty sleep is not based on fiction or lazy people who want to justify their slothfulness. there are real scientific findings that support this fact. if all i have to do to look more attractive is sleep, then sleep I will. Sleep is the one thing that enhances beauty without causing any discomfort or pain.

Here are the scientific facts that you did not know about the correlation between sleep and beauty.

• Sleep gives your skin the opportunity to mend itself of any wear and tear caused during the day. Lack of sleep damages your skin because the eye bags and the dark circles cause your skin to sag
• Even a tiny ray of light interrupts your sleep cycle, so wear a sleep mask to maintain the cycle. apparently, before the invention of the light bulbs, people slept longer, at least 10 hours.
• Lack of sleep makes you fat; all those hours of exercise go down the drain. just sleep if you want to speed up your weight loss
• Lack of sleep speeds up the aging process. Your body needs rest to process the carbs in your body and regulate the levels of your hormones.
• An increased appetite results from lack of sleep. this increases fats in your body which will accumulate under your skin. The more food you eat, the more food your body has to process and this ages the body faster. 

How can you enhance your sleep cycle?

• Drink a cup of chamomile tea before sleeping
• Keep your bedroom, cool, aired, dark and quiet
• Exercise to relax your muscles
• Create a bed time routine. Sleep at the same time each day and wake up at the same time. 

there are so many ways of enhancing your sleep that does not involve using sleeping pills. Since sleep stimulates the brain and repairs your skin, for healthy skin, the recommended 8 hours a day should be followed.

Is beauty only skin deep?

Beauty is a constant phenomenon throughout human civilization. From the era of Egypt civilization, thousands of years before the advent of cosmetics and cosmetic surgery, beauty was a very real aspect of the lifestyles of humans. With this fact being established, it is safe to say that beauty and all its trappings, shall continue to exist long after we are all gone.

Before much is said regarding beauty, we need to ask ourselves questions.

What does beauty mean? both to you and the society you live in

Why is it such a consuming force?

What price are you willing to pay to be beautiful?

With all these questions going through our minds, let us remember that the need to look and feel good is innate. Everyone is born with that desire to look better than everyone. How else do you explain the need for pre-civilization folks to wrap themselves in fur of animals with the softest and most beautiful patterns? The constant need to take a bath using scented water? Face painting and tribal markings? All this in an effort to look good even without advanced technology.

Even as we ponder on all these facts, we should ask ourselves the million dollar question: Is beauty only skin deep?

Is your outward beauty a reflection of what you feel, think, want?

Will people think you more beautiful if you are more pleasant to them?

Is beauty dependent on what you feed on?

All these questions can only be answered by you after deep thought. So what do you think? Is beauty only skin deep?