 By Heather If you are on a calorie-controlled diet, then one easy way to cut your calorie consumption is to switch from whole milk to a lower fat variety such as semi-skimmed milk. If you are not counting the calories and living an active life, or if you are a growing child, then whole milk – typically around 3.5-4% fat – is a great source of nutrition. What is the difference between whole milk and semi-skimmed milk in terms of processing? Whole milk is more or less straight out of the cow in terms of fat content; all supermarket bought milk is pasteurised to kill germs and homogenised to ensure an even consistency. However, different cow breeds produce milk with slightly different fat contents. So a Jersey cow produces really creamy milk (yum!) compared to a Holstein. Even the season or type of food the farmer gives the cow can change the fat content. So to ensure a standard fat content of 4% the milk is processed. The processing is a way of separating all the fat (cream) from the non-fat (skim) and then returning the fat to the skim in specified amounts according to the desired milk. So less cream is returned to the skim when producing semi-skimmed milk compared to whole milk. What is the difference between whole milk and semi-skimmed milk in terms of fat content? The fat content of whole milk is 4%. For semi-skimmed the fat content is around 2%. You can also get 1% milk, which contains 1% fat, and skimmed milk which is virtually fat-free. Fat Content in Different Milk:
 Is the fat in milk bad fat? Fat has a bad press, but milk is highly nutritious and a good source of fat. The fat in milk is made up of several different fatty acids. The majority of these are saturated fatty acids which you may have heard about. Much official guidance from health agencies advises limiting saturated fat intake because of the link to heart disease. However milk also contains other fatty acids such as mono- and polyunsaturates.
 What are the advantages of whole milk? Whole milk is a good source of energy for growing children or young adults with high energy needs. It is also energy dense, so the elderly may use whole milk to get a good portion of their calorie intake. What are the disadvantages of whole milk? Whole milk does have the highest fat content, and contains 21-23 more calories per 100ml than 1% semi-skimmed. So if you are on a calorie controlled diet or trying to lose weight, you may want to swap whole milk for a lower calorie milk since over time, these calories are significant. What milk should one choose? Your choice of milk should be guided by your individual tastes as well as your health goals. If you cannot tell the difference in taste between the different milk and you are restricting calories, semi-skimmed or lower fat milk is a good option. If you are living a physically active life and not drinking milk to excess, you can enjoy whole milk.  Although your personal finances and your business success are my primary interest, I believe you only operate at peak efficiency when you're fit and healthy. If you feel good, it filters through to your work. To help you with that, click for your free ebook: The Quick Guide to Sexy
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 Reading Amazon kindle books on Windows XP, Vista and 7 is easy peasy. Log into your Amazon account and download the software: Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. This is essentially the "app" for Windows. When you buy kindle books off the Amazon website, you can have them wirelessly delivered to this or any other device that you own. If you download a book to one device it will be in the Archives on the other devices so you can simply reload it to an alternative gadget at no additional cost. Happy days. This is how you can read kindle books on iPhone, iPad or Mac.   You don't need to own a kindle tablet in order to read kindle books! Here is how you can read kindle books on any apple device: 1. Go to the app store 2. Search "kindle" and you can download the kindle app 3. The app allows you to read any kindle books that you've bought on the Amazon store In the early days, you could buy the books directly through the app but as usual Apple got greedy and wanted a cut of book sales so nowadays you have to buy the books directly from the Amazon website. No worries, you can still do that using your phone. The best bit is that you can have the Amazon kindle app on multiple platforms. I have it on three iThings. When I open any book on one gadget or the other it knows the last point to which the book was opened on another device and asks if I want to go there. Neat, huh? When you buy kindle books off the Amazon website, you can have them wirelessly delivered to this or any other device that you own. If you download a book to one device it will be in the Archives on the other devices so you can simply reload it to an alternative gadget at no additional cost. Happy days. This is how you can read kindle books on Windows XP, Vista or 7.   By Heather Although Fat Creep™ is all about healthy eating and maintaining a regular exercise regime, I get asked questions about how to lose weight fast more frequently than one might expect! I have never had to lose weight fast so these tips are based on what I know about food and periods when I have just happened to lose weight rapidly. Okay, so let's say you have 7 to 30 days within which you need to drop a dress size or two. The following will help you get trim. FAST WEIGHT LOSS MEAL PLAN: a. Breakfast: 40 - 60 grams of oats cooked with water or fully skimmed milk with no sugar added, if possible. Oats are very filling and will help you to stave off cravings. Do you have a kitchen scale? It is not obsessive behaviour to weigh key food items like grains and other carbs because eating too much of these is a common reason for weight gain and weight retention. Get a scale. b. mid-morning snack: a vegetable or fruit such as carrot, kiwi, tangerine or any other fruit/vegetable. c. Lunch: if you consider an ordinary-sized plate, carbs (e.g. cous cous, corn, rice or pasta) should fit in no more than one-third of the plate; half should be vegetables, and meat should fill just under a quarter of the plate. Alternatively, just have a 12-ounce soup or a large salad with no bread or fatty salad dressings. Some people will advise you not to have any rice or pasta at all but in all honesty I find that having a little bit (say, 100-125 grams in one meal) stops carb-cravings from occurring. I think cutting carbs out completely does more harm than good. d. afternoon snack: allow for more than the mid morning snack: a heftier fruit serving or a boiled egg. e. dinner - like lunch.  FAST WEIGHT LOSS RULES: 1. Completely remove all processed foods including (but not limited to) the following from your diet:
If you are offered foods like the above at a party or any other unavoidable social gathering and cannot resist, just have a mouthful from someone else's plate and stop there. If you get your own serving you will finish it. Clear your cupboards at home of all the above foods to avoid temptation. 2. If you go to restaurants, choose fish, meat and salad options, they tend to contain fewer calories; if they come with carbs e.g. rice or mash, give half of that to someone else. If you can, don't eat out at all for this period of fast weight loss. Going out just opens you up to a lot of temptation. 3. Never ever get hungry, hunger pangs lead to cravings, cravings lead to overeating bad food - keep carrots and other portable veg in your handbag. You can eat as many vegetables as you like but don't overdo the fruit, too much sugar!  4. Drink water regularly: 2 glasses each first thing in the morning, before lunch, during the afternoon and before dinner. Making sure you are well hydrated will help to keep cravings at bay and is great for good skin. 5. Nuts are good but for a rapid weight loss, I would consider not eating them at all as it can be hard to eat the right-size portion. If you love nuts then have no more than a handful within any seven day period; nuts are high-ish in calories although they are healthy. 6. Do at least 45 minutes of cardio at least twice a week e.g. an intense jog, cycle or rowing session. 7. Do resistance training at least twice a week. I've actually put this as a separate thing 'to do' because combining this with the cardio would lead to people doing just the type of exercise they prefer, cardio in my case. Combining different exercises actually helps more with weight loss than doing just one type. 8. Adjust your daily routine to include more activity e.g. walk to work or part of the way to work, take the stairs instead of the lift, walk up escalators, do sit-ups and weights as you watch TV, put a cycle bike in front of the TV. Substitute sedentary activities e.g. watching TV with active ones e.g. going to a museum. Overall, the less you eat and the more you exercise the faster you will lose weight. You might also like: What's a balanced diet? A healthy eating plan: slow-carb diet, Low-GI diet The 'life' stuff that unexpectedly makes you fat. Be aware.  Although your personal finances and your business success are my primary interest, I believe you only operate at peak efficiency when you're fit and healthy. If you feel good, it filters through to your work. To help you with that, click for your free ebook: The Quick Guide to Sexy  I had no idea that dramatic arts in Malawi had reached this quality. This play was astoundingly awesome. It was extremely well acted, it had great sound effects and they dealt with the tough subject matter in a humorous fashion. If you ever have the opportunity to see this production, grab it with both hands! Description of play from Africa Centre website: Malawi in the 1980s was a dangerous place. People disappeared. Even President Banda’s cabinet were not safe. Banda ordered his Young Pioneers to act against anyone who opposed the president. And Crocodiles Are Hungry At Night is an adaptation of award-winning poet Jack Mapanje’s prison memoir of the same name. In 1987, Jack Mapanje, then a little-known academic, linguist and poet, was imprisoned without charge at Mikuyu prison in Malawi. Despite an international outcry led by Amnesty International and supported by many writers and artists including Wole Soyinka, Harold Pinter and Ronald Harwood, he remained there for 3 years, 7 months, 16 days and more than 12 hours. He was never told why. This is his story. It is a story bursting with hope and humour, and the extraordinary people who survived President Hastings Kamuzu Banda’s attempts to silence his opponents. Living with the threat of death by a ‘car accident’ or being thrown into the crocodile-infested Shire River, Jack Mapanje and his fellow prisoners of conscience survived the dreadful conditions with a spirit of optimism and humanity, which is both uplifting and extraordinary. Everything in this play is true.  And Crocodiles Are Hungry At Night the prison memoir was published last year by Ayebia Clarke publishing, and launched at an event hosted by Amnesty International. The book has created a lot of interest both in Malawi and the UK; Jack Mapanje was recently interviewed alongside Nadine Gordimer on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week, and the play has been booked for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s poetry festival in July. The play runs for 105 minutes, and plays without an interval.   By Heather I've had three episodes of weight gain in the last 10 years and each time have had to change my lifestyle to accommodate a healthier way of living. That's yo-yo dieting, some might say, no it isn't. Looking back, I can identify exactly what led to the weight gain and it's taken a lot of learning on my part to discover what works. Moving country The first time I gained weight was due to a move from Malawi (Africa) to England. Going to a new country means a new diet and exposure to a new attitude to food. In Malawi, I ate whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted but I was usually surrounded by healthy natural foods so it wasn't a problem. To eat foods like cakes and chocolates, I really had to go out of my way. In addition, I wasn't bombarded with the Ad Man's images of what I should be eating. England on the other hand was the opposite: relatively cheap junk food combined with the constant advertising of confectionery. The same I'll eat what I want, when I want attitude led to weight gain. Moving from university to a full-time job This was the cause of my next round of weight gain. Moving from a relatively active university or school life to a sedentary desk job usually cannot be helped. My mode of transport in university was a bike. With my first job came sitting for prolonged periods of time and a much more limited ability to exercise. I tried to eat well so the weight gain was very gradual but ultimately, I lost track.  Changing Jobs The third and final time that I ever gained weight and that I will ever gain weight (fingers crossed) involved a job change. I went from a sedentary job to an even more sedentary job. I sat for such long periods of time that I even started getting back problems. An injury No longer being able to exercise for instance because of an injury will lead to weight gain. There are two solutions: either eat less or do the types of exercise that your injury will allow. If you can't run, try cycling or fast walking; do more resistance training. Increasing availability of food – both junk and healthy food. Nowadays every corner shop and supermarket has a tasty little delight that they are trying to get you consuming. If you go back even a couple of decades this ubiquitousness of food simply wasn’t there. This becomes a bigger problem every year. It’s especially a problem in the developed world where consumption and more consumption has become a way of life. Resist it  Moving from a low portion country to a high portion country I did a 6-week stint in New York a few years back and I was flabbergasted by the portion sizes. The food was delish but every meal was 3 to 4 times a standard London portion AND half the price or less! At first, I resisted but by the end of 6-weeks I found myself adapting so much so that I was annoyed by the stingy London portions when I got back. Had I stayed in New York, fat would surely have become me. Most of us were brought up not to waste and to finish our food so leaving food on one's plate doesn’t come naturally. I say, ignore this advice, if you're given a portion that's too large get a doggy back for the excess or just leave it. Moving house The stress of moving makes you eat more but in addition, it takes time to find the local gyms and parks in a new area so it’s quite natural to pile on a few pounds leading up to a house move. Having a baby I don't have one of these but many women gain weight during pregnancy and have trouble shifting it afterwards. They also have less incentive as this is a time when they have other more important priorities. You actually don't need to eat that much extra when you're pregnant. Most of us overeat so in reality most of us shouldn't be eating extra at all! How much extra should you eat if you're pregnant? The equivalent of an extra slice of toast per day - only. That's only 100 - 200 kcal extra per day. What is the solution?
 Although your personal finances and your business success are my primary interest, I believe you only operate at peak efficiency when you're fit and healthy. If you feel good, it filters through to your work. To help you with that, click for your free ebook: The Quick Guide to Sexy
  David by Donatello Set on three levels, this museum took us about 1.5 - 2 hours to get through. In 37 degree (celsius) heat it was challenging to keep walking. I sat down and fell asleep! I was very lethargic. I was only there three days ago but I've mostly forgotten what I saw - I blame the heat.  |
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Heather Katsonga-Woodward, a massive personal finance fanatic.
** All views expressed are my own and not those of any employer, past or present. ** Please get professional advice before re-arranging your personal finances.