Weight loss hints and tips

In planning a meal plan, the most important step is to make efforts to lower your intake of fat, salt and refined carbohydrates.

Some low carbohydrate diet tips:
* Don't ignore the fiber Reducing the carbohydrates in your diet usually results in reduction in fiber as well. Look at reduced carbohydrate recipes that are high in fiber to redress this.

* Use reduced carb chocolate bars for chocolate muffins. If you have converted your best loved chocolate chip cookie or muffins recipe using soya flour, you don’t want to add in those high carbohydrate 'real' chocolate. Break up a low carbohydrate bar of chocolate into little pieces and use that in its place.

Lycopene superfoods
(includes grapefruit, red bell peppers and tomato sauce)

The nutrient lypcopene is a non-synthetic compound used to color foods and one of the carotenid family. It is the reason for the deep red colour of a good number of fruits and vegetables.

Fortunately, unlike numerous nutritional compounds, this useful phytochemical not only survives being cooked, but is noticeably increased in efficacy by cooking.

. Its most valuable theraputic value is that it serves as an antioxidant and appears to be an asset in the fight to lower the probabilty of developing cancer.

It is the most efficacious carotenoid quencher of singlet oxygen, which is linked with aging of the skin. It is also thought by many researchers to curtail the progression of atherosclerosis.