Health and Wellness – Page 6 – Here's What I Think…

Could the keto diet be the answer to PCOS?

I have been chronicling my own journey on the keto diet over the last 14 months. The keto, short for ketogenic, diet is way of eating that reduced total carbohydrate intake per day to 20g of carbs or less and promotes the consumption of high levels of healthy fats and moderate amounts of protein. How that essentially looks in my own life is that I simply don’t eat sugar, flour, rice, pasta, starchy vegetables, potatoes, ground provisions, beans and fruit. I eat healthy fats such as full fat dairy products, coconut and olive oils, butter, avocados, nuts and animal fats. I eat loads of all green veggies. I’ve curated testimonials of people who’ve successfully controlled diabetes, high blood pressure and other conditions by switching to a keto diet too.

But did you know that for the millions of women living with it, that the keto diet may be the perfect response to PCOS? Continue reading Could the keto diet be the answer to PCOS?

Don’t Sabotage Your Keto Journey by Too Many Changes All at Once.

When most of us decide to embark on (yet another) weight loss program, we attack Day 1 of The Change with gusto! “I’m going keto! I’m going to lose weight and my life will change!” We go to the gym, we pack our salad for lunch, we come home energised and eat air pie and breeze pudding (ok maybe we eat another salad) and feel great! “I’m gonna do this (this time)!” we shout to all who’ll listen. Day 2 is a repeat of Day 1. Yippee! Day 5: Let’s skip the gym today. I’ve been good all week. And I’m totally going to have a slice of cheesecake today. Let’s call it a cheat day plus I’m sooo worth it. Two months later the scale hasn’t budged, your friends and family are gently teasing you about the grand announcements you made about turning your life around with weight loss and deep down you feel like a miserable failure even if you never say it aloud, and your self-esteem takes a battering. You’ve failed. Again. You’ll be fat forever. You’re weak. You’re greedy. You’re not disciplined enough. You lack willpower. Those are the LIES seeking to condemn you to an unhappy state. Continue reading Don’t Sabotage Your Keto Journey by Too Many Changes All at Once.

Jamaican Callaloo & Keto: Quiche and Beyond!

People tend to balk at the things that people on the keto diet do NOT eat. “No rice? No potato? I LOVE pasta! How will I manage without bread? I simply cannot give up my fruit!” My response to them is always the same: “And how is that working for you?” Radio silence. It’s plain crazy to want change and keep doing the same things. I also tell them that I choose to focus on what we can and do eat! There’s a whole new, colourful, exciting, delicious world out here in keto-land! One of the things I told myself when I started this keto journey over a year ago is that I’m going to treat this as an adventure and learn to make delicious low-carb dishes that utilize the local ingredients that I grew up with here in Jamaica. I am going to prove to myself and others that the keto diet is possible and sustainable right here in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean. I started documenting my journey on Instagram, to showcase my awesome food 🙂 and also as away of holding me accountable. Yup…can’t afford to quit publicly, right? Here’s how I use Jamaican callaloo to make keto dishes that even non-low carbers LOVE!

Continue reading Jamaican Callaloo & Keto: Quiche and Beyond!

Sabotaging your Keto Diet: Friday drinking and Sunday dinners.

Most people have no problem adhering to a healthy eating plan during the week. It is the weekend that sees them undoing all the good they did during the week. It’s understandable though. During the week most of us are on a set schedule with very little down time. So we get up, drop kids to school, go to work, work, pick up kids, head home, deal with our other job at home, rinse, repeat. We’re busy and so we eat set meals that we prepare and carry or order and we’re occupied with things other than eating. Did you get that? “We’re occupied with things other than eating.” Boredom and inactivity and the absence of a plan lead to picking around and indulging and getting fat! Now I don’t know about you, but I HATE having my time wasted. I can’t imagine anything worse than making an effort all week, eating salads, exercising portion control, drinking up my water, consuming all the good fats and protein, pretending that carbs don’t even exist for goodness’ sake and then wiping out all that gain over two days. Ugh.

Continue reading Sabotaging your Keto Diet: Friday drinking and Sunday dinners.

Starting the Keto Diet: Tips for Success!

So you’ve seen the weight loss transformations. You’ve read the testimonials about improved overall health and quality of life. You’ve seen pictures of the food. You can’t believe this is real, but so many people can’t be wrong. You want to try it for yourself. You are ready to try keto! You want to start the ketogenic diet but you’re not quite sure where to start. I’ll share what I did and offer some tips to set you up for success once you think you want to go keto. Still not sure what keto is and isn’t? I break down the keto diet here. I address 15 of the toughest questions about keto that I’ve received, questions about fruit and keto, alcohol and keto, eating fat to lose fat and so on.

Continue reading Starting the Keto Diet: Tips for Success!

Keto, diabetes and cholesterol: Beyond weight loss.

What if I told you diabetes could be reversed without drugs? What if I told you cholesterol could come down without drugs? Well there are living, breathing examples on the planet where this has happened. And it hasn’t happened at the expense of their general well-being and feelings of being satisfied either. Eschew all thoughts of strict, painful eating regimes where you are relegated to bowls of undressed lettuce leaves and gallons of almond milk (I happen to like lettuce and almond milk, but I like them with my steak and cheese and coffee and butter). These people are adherents to the keto (short for ketogenic) diet and not only have they have lost weight, but they’ve had some pretty awesome changes in other areas of their lives. Serious chronic illnesses have totally disappeared in some instances!

Continue reading Keto, diabetes and cholesterol: Beyond weight loss.

Lose Weight and Gain a Life: Keto helped me do it.

It’s more about the life you gain than the weight you lose.

I promise not to be preachy. There’s nothing more annoying that someone who’s lost 3 lbs preaching all chirpily about the benefits of weight loss from a lofty place on high. “You can do it! Yes you can!” As if we don’t know when we’ve gained a few…or a lot… I mean WTF!

I’m fat. So what? Leave me alone.

Of course I know I’ve gotten bigger.

Continue reading Lose Weight and Gain a Life: Keto helped me do it.

15 QUESTIONS ABOUT THE KETO DIET ANSWERED

“Keto” is short for “ketogenic”. The ketogenic diet flips conventional nutritional wisdom on its head and advocates reducing carbohydrate intake to less than 20g carbs per day and promotes consumption of higher than normal levels of GOOD fats and moderate amounts of protein! When you reduce carbs so drastically, your body is forced to burn fat for fuel, instead of the conventional glucose or carbohydrate metabolic pathway. The by-products of burning fats for energy are called “ketones”. Fun fact: the ketogenic diet was first developed in the 1920’s for people living with epilepsy. The keto diet is similar to low-carb diets like Atkins which became popular in the 1980’s. Low-carb diets typically allow for consumption of more than 20g carbs per day, even up to 100g carbs. I’ve been doing the keto diet for over a year now and I couldn’t be happier! I’ve compiled answers to the questions I’m most frequently asked. Continue reading 15 QUESTIONS ABOUT THE KETO DIET ANSWERED

Dementia in Jamaica: Challenging Stigma, Responding in Love.

It has most likely happened to us at some point. During conversation with (usually) an older person you’re exchanging information, answering and asking questions, you explain that you’re so and so’s daughter and that you do X for a living. Two minutes later, you’re hit with the question: So who are your parents? And what do you do? You’re taken aback, you pause, then you respond. This will likely happen another two times or so during the course of the interaction. You catch the eye of someone else across the room. They put their index finger to their head and make air circles and shrug. You nod with understanding, and begin to extricate yourself from the conversation with wan apologies and excuses of needing to speak to someone else. You walk away shaking your head with pity and maybe a little fear, fear that someday you’ll succumb to the inevitable fate of failing memory as you age. Words like senile and Alzheimer’s and dementia swirl around in your mind and you pray that you escape such a fate.

Continue reading Dementia in Jamaica: Challenging Stigma, Responding in Love.

My Jamaican Keto Journey AND Intermittent Fasting: A Weight Loss Success Story!

I love food. I had already started to change how I ate but weight loss was slow. I kept hearing about this “Intermittent Fasting” but didn’t pay it much mind. After all, I had given up rice, sugar, flour and all their relatives and now I was expected to go without food on top of all that? Hmmm…. Let me start at the beginning.