Why lower the carbs?
When children eat low carb nutritious meals they avoid the high/low blood sugar roller coaster, they avoid energy slumps and more importantly, they avoid all the inflammatory elements of our modern diet. Children do not need the volume of carbs they consume. Many parents are unaware of how much sugar is hidden in everyday foods. 77% of processed food has added sugar. Take a look at the 2 lunchboxes and compare their carb values.
The rapidly absorbed carbs, which spike blood glucose, also crowd out nutrition. For example, the nutritious element in a chicken salad sandwich is the filling, the bread is just a bulking agent that adds almost nothing nutritionally to the meal. In fact, any vitamins the packaging may claim have probably added during the manufacturing process. By removing bread/pasta/rice from a meal, your children will fill up on fresh vegetables, good quality protein, and healthy fats instead.
What about Fat?
Healthy fats are essential for hormone production, healthy brain function, tissue development, appetite control and absorption of fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K). Children especially need Omega 3 fatty acids for healthy eye and brain development. Avoid the low-fat products as they generally have added sugar to improve the flavor and texture. Choose healthy fats such as olive oil, butter, coconut oil, oily fish, nuts, seeds, eggs, and meat. Stop using seed oils which are inflammatory and incredibly processed.
Help your children to eat real food:
- One meal at a time – if you have a fussy eater, your household will not be a happy one if you go straight in and change everything overnight. Change or remove only one element at a time. Remove (or reduce) the most obvious place sugar lurks such as sweets, cakes and ice cream, then cut back on bread, pasta and other high carb foods. Be proud of any changes you make, and strive for improvement not perfection.
- Be organized – plan your meals and have plenty of fresh food at hand. Have some boiled eggs in the fridge, leftovers in the freezer, fresh vegetable pre-cut in containers, tins of tuna in the pantry. Prepare extra vegetables each night, ready for the next day’s snacks or lunch box.
- Make double dinners – leftovers are king and are such an easy way to prepare for school lunches. Cooked sausages, roast meat, quiche, meatballs or eggs any way are always popular options. Fill your freezer with leftovers. Learn to love your freezer!
- Reduce the bread – try bread free lunches once or twice a week, increasing until you are bread free. Try thin wraps or open sandwiches to cut back for really reluctant children.
- Involve your children – give them a limited choice of healthy foods to choose from so they feel they have some control.
- Choices – allow them to leave one vegetable on their plate. This is the trick that really turned my 8-year-old around. He felt he had the final control of his dinner, unbeknownst to him I give him more of everything, to begin with.
- Plan meals – allow them to go through LCHF recipe websites and cookbooks to choose meals and recipes. Let them collate their own special cookbook.
- Picky eaters – all children love picking at food and eating small platters. I often put out a selection of vegetables, cold meats, and cheeses for their afternoon tea. Buy a lunchbox with small compartments and serve them a buffet.
- Healthy fats – at meal times encourage your children to eat their vegetables by putting healthy fats on the dinner table such as butter, grated/shredded cheese, salad dressings, and healthy oils. Not only will the flavor be enhanced, but it also helps them absorb the fat-soluble vitamins from their meal. Pack dips, salsa, and sauces to dip their vegetables in at school.
- Drinks – start serving water only. Stop allowing them to drink juice or soda. These can be the biggest contributor to sugar in their meal.
- Beware – read the labels of foods traditionally given to children such as raisins, muesli bars, fruit yogurt, and cereals. These are often the worst culprits. Find or make your own low sugar alternatives. You will know exactly what goes in them.
- Feed them a rainbow – a colorful meal is so more attractive packed with a variety of color and nutrients.
- Stop buying kids meals – most kid’s meals are highly processed junk food packed with inflammatory seed oils, grains and carbs. Pizza, nuggets, pasta, toast, and spaghetti with sauce. Start ordering half an adult meal, or split an adult meal between siblings.
- Try and try again – moving children onto real food can really be a challenge. It won’t happen overnight but it will happen. Continue to introduce new foods and remove others.
Don’t be daunted at the start. You can do this. It’s getting back to basics and ditching the processed junk. Here is a month of my children’s school lunches for inspiration (insert link). Have fun preparing meals together and discovering new recipes. So many families have commented that they are cooking for the first time, learning to appreciate real food and excited at the prospect of a healthier lifestyle.
Don’t think you are depriving your child of junk food, you are teaching them how to eat healthily and remain healthy. You are feeding them the healthy fats and good sources of protein their bodies truly need.
What Is a Detox?
Detox diets are generally short-term dietary interventions designed to eliminate toxins from your body.
A typical detox diet involves a period of fasting, followed by a strict diet of fruit, vegetables, fruit juices, and water. Sometimes a detox also includes herbs, teas, supplements, and colon cleanse or enemas.
This is claimed to:
- Rest your organs by fasting
- Stimulate your liver to get rid of toxins
- Promote toxin elimination through feces, urine, and sweat
- Improve circulation
- Provide your body with healthy nutrients
Detox therapies are most commonly recommended because of potential exposure to toxic chemicals in the environment or your diet. These include pollutants, synthetic chemicals, heavy metals, and other harmful compounds.
These diets are also claimed to help with various health problems, including obesity, digestive issues, autoimmune diseases, inflammation, allergies, bloating, and chronic fatigue (1Trusted Source).
However, human research on detox diets is lacking, and the handful of studies that exist are significantly flawed.
How the Body Naturally Detoxifies
Detoxification is a process that the body performs around the clock utilizing important nutrients from the diet. It’s the process that transforms molecules that need to be removed from the body, or “toxins.” They fall into two main categories: molecules that are made in the body as byproducts of regular metabolism (endotoxins), and those that come from outside the body and are introduced to the system by eating, drinking, breathing or are absorbed through the skin (exotoxins).
Endotoxins include compounds such as lactic acid, urea, and waste products from microbes in the gut. Exotoxins include environmental toxins and pollutants, pesticides, mercury in seafood, lead from car exhaust and air pollution, chemicals in tobacco smoke, dioxin in feminine care products, phthalates from plastic and parabens from lotions and cosmetics.
Detoxification also is the process by which medications are metabolized, then excreted. Because toxins are potentially dangerous to human health, they need to be transformed and excreted from the body through urine, feces, respiration or sweat.
Each person’s ability to detoxify varies and is influenced by environment, diet, lifestyle, health status and genetic factors, suggesting some people could require more detoxification support than others. But if the amount of toxin to which a person is exposed exceeds his or her body’s ability to excrete them, the toxins may be stored in fat cells, soft tissue and bone, negatively affecting health. This is the rationale that supports the use of practices that support the body’s own detoxification capabilities.
8 Ways to Support Your Body’s Natural Detox
Detoxification support doesn’t need to consist of a rigorous plan; doing some or all of the following can support your body’s natural detoxification:
- Maintain adequate hydration with clean water.
- Eat five to nine servings of fruit and vegetables per day.
- Consume enough fiber each day from vegetables, nuts, seeds, and whole grains.
- Eat cruciferous vegetables, berries, artichokes, garlic, onions, leeks, turmeric, and milk thistle, and drink green tea. These foods support detoxification pathways.
- Consume adequate protein, which is critical to maintaining optimum levels of glutathione, the body’s master detoxification enzyme.
- Consider taking a multivitamin/multimineral to fill any gaps in a healthy diet, since certain vitamins and minerals enable the body’s detoxification processes to function.
- Eat naturally fermented foods such as kefir, yogurt, kimchi, and sauerkraut — or take a high-quality probiotic — to help the body manage toxins from microbes that live in the gut.
- Maintain bowel regularity.
How Effective Are These Diets?
Some people report feeling more focused and energetic during and after detox diets.
However, this improved well-being may simply be due to eliminating processed foods, alcohol, and other unhealthy substances from your diet. You may also be getting vitamins and minerals that were lacking before. That said, many people also report feeling very unwell during the detox period.
Effects on Weight Loss
Very few scientific studies have investigated how detox diets impact weight loss.
While some people may lose a lot of weight quickly, this effect seems to be due to loss of fluid and carb stores rather than fat. This weight is usually regained quickly once you go off the cleanse.
One study in overweight Korean women examined the lemon detox diet, which limits you to a mixture of organic maple or palm syrups and lemon juice for seven days. This diet significantly reduced body weight, BMI, body fat percentage, waist-to-hip ratio, waist circumference, markers of inflammation, insulin resistance, and circulating leptin levels (16Trusted Source).
If a detox diet involves severe calorie restriction, it will most certainly cause weight loss and improvements in metabolic health — but it’s unlikely to help you keep weight off in the long term.
Detox Diets, Short-Term Fasting, and Stress
Several varieties of detox diets may have effects similar to those of short-term or intermittent fasting. Short-term fasting may improve various disease markers in some people, including improved leptin and insulin sensitivity.
However, these effects do not apply to everyone. Studies in women show that both a 48-hour fast and a 3-week period of reduced calorie intake may increase your stress hormone levels.
On top of that, crash diets can be a stressful experience, as they involve resisting temptations and feeling extreme hunger.
