Your Best Ever Body: Day 4

So day four is upon us, and I have decided to continue my unintentional trend of giving my own thoughts on each meal before giving Ian’s.

Dinnertime!

Another toughie. For most of us the thought of cooking after a hard day at work is enough to make you reach for the delight of a microwave meal – the taste leaves you with a face like Pat Butcher chewing a wasp.

But while preparing a decent meal for dinner can seem like a battle, I find that it is good to look at the pro’s and con’s of putting the effort in:

• You will give your body a good hit of nutritients to help it repair and restore itself during the night
• You will likely have a much more settled night’s sleep
• Having a proper meal will ensure that your blood sugar remains stable
• There will be much less chance of late night snacking
• You will not wake up with a stomach ache in the morning – something a lot of people I know have just accepted as a fact of life and have gotten used to…

It is a good place to get to. If for nothing else, then remember this if you ever reach for a late night snack-a-roo. When you eat something heavy just before bedtime every last bit of it that can will turn to blubber. You body has no mechanism to burn off those calories while you are asleep. On top of that you will not sleep properly as your body will still be working well into the night trying to digest everything. And while you are depriving your body of sleep you might want to remember this new research that has hit all of the headlines showing that inadequate sleep leads to weight gain.

Anyway – let’s get on with Marber’s dinner philosophy! He makes some good points here, and in my opinion, some shaky points. But then who am I to argue. I’m just a blogger after all…

The better points are:

As evening approaches, our metabolism starts to slow down to prepare us for a good night’s sleep. Therefore, try to avoid eating late.

As far as vegetables are concerned, you can have pretty much what you like…Spinach, lightly cooked, is a powerhouse of nutrients such as iron, calcium and magnesium

Try to cook from scratch. People who battle with their weight tend to eat more ready meals (*cough* Jenny Craig *cough*)

How you cook is as important as what you cook. Steaming is best – the food will retain the majority of its fibre, while the nutrients are less affected. Steam all your vegetables and fish

Frying affects the quality of fats in food and converts the oil into an unstable fat, which can cause a higher level of harmful free radicals.

These are all great things to take away from this article. And if you are a woman, or a man of fine nail desires, Ian rounds up by giving us his top tips for eating for strong nails. Cheers for that Ian.