A Good Night's Sleep

" . . sleep is one of the most important parts of our lives, which is why the brain insists that we spend almost a third of our lives doing it. Without sleep, essential body functions start winding down;  total lack of sleep WILL kill you"

I've spent my working life shuffling sleep from one day to another - sometimes 2 or 3 hours, so that for a couple of days, non stop,  then crash for ten hours a few days later. An old mentor of mine from the 70s told me about something that he called 'The 100% Energy trip'', in which he did just that. He simply worked non-stop, around the clock, for 2 or 3 days.  As you would expect, he had to just crash after such a session! It was one way of getting things done, and great if you are really enjoying whatever it is you are into at the time, but apparently it can cause huge health problems that don't manifest until later in life.

I recently discovered that this has been the cause of many problems, in a little book (Get Yourself a Good Night's Sleep) that explains why we need about 7 hours a night, and why naps are good for us.  Those Mediterranean types who take a nap in the afternoon are generally much healthier than we Brits, who insist on ploughing on through the afternoon. 

It's hard to believe but, while we sleep, the brain is in fact beavering away, triggering other parts of the body to produce essential chemicals that keep us functioning. The brain also works during the sleep cycle doing housekeeping, including junking non-important information that we are unlikely to need again. The book explains the four sleep cycles that most of us have, and why the last sleep period of the night (the REM period, which is where the eyes move, but where we are in fact most likely to be dreaming). 

Did you know that -

"the arms and legs are usually paralysed during your REM period of sleep? This is vital, and the brain 'freezes' muscles so that your body doesn't act out whatever it is you are dreaming!" 

Various conditions promote good sound sleep, including the sleeping environment (temperature, oxygen levels, ambient noise, etc) and especially what food and drink we consume in the few hours before we get off to sleep. 

Did you ever watch horses or various birds while they sleep?  They really CAN sleep while standing up, some birds even sleep on just one leg!  How do they manage that? The book "A Good Night's Sleep" explains, as well as compares the long sleep cycles some animals have - its common knowledge that cats can spend up to 22 hours sleeping. Why do they do that? All is explained in this book.

There's more sleep advice and links to other great ideas and aids on a special SLEEP page on the Diets That Work web site - check the sleep page out HERE. 

Much more importantly, the book has many great tips to help YOU get A Good Night's Sleep and for that reason it could be the most important book you will read, not just this year, but EVER! 

The book is available through Amazon so quite easy to find (click HERE)  

I hope it can change YOUR life too. Happy Snoozing!

Welcome to Diets That Work, UK

Welcome to the first post in our Blog, 

Diets That Work 

We hope to make this blog a frequent up date to be a complement our main DietsThatWork.co.uk web site, and have daily updates, tips and hopefully YOUR comments too?  Please do feel free to add your thoughts at the foot of this blog. We shall do our best to answer them either on this blog or on the main web site.  (Make sure you bookmark both the blog and the web site so you can pop back easily at any time you need some help?)

There can be few of us who havent struggled to lose a bit of weight at times.  So many diets are available to us that its difficult to know which diets work, or which are simply a waste of time. In this information age its so easy to get bogged down with so much information.  Hopefully Diets That Work  can save some of YOUR previous time by pointing you to Diets that DO work.

One of the our guiding 'qualifications' for checking diets were to give more attention to those that are not reliant on huge amounts of tortuous exercise.  

While exercise IS good for us for several reasons, the fact remains that exercise does not have anywhere near so much effect on our weight or shape as does regulation of the intake of food and drink. 

Recipes that  help you Lose Weight

The best diets that work are m ore than simply a long list of ingredients of foods you are allowed to eat.  Some of the ingredients are not tasty enough to eat long term and may need some preparation, even cooking!   We have found the best recipes of some of the best nutrition.

We have been in touch with some of the top nutritionists and most respected diet experts in the world. We have considered their advice and asked them to give tips on losing weight safely and quickly. We got them to devise meals using ingredients that are healthy, nutritious and, most of all, delicious!

The recipes are all easy to follow and many of them are pretty simply with the minimum of preparation needed.  Some diets have a variety of meals that can be made using only four or five ingredients.  NONE of the diets use expensive ingredients, and they should all be easy to obtain. 

Calories 

There is no doubt that calories have undoubtedly the biggest effect of all and are the over-riding factor.  It's for this reason that we have a whole page on the main web site devoted to calories  and we urge you to take a look at that, it's in the FOOD section. 

Too many diets these days are negative and simply give you a whole long list of foods that they consider are bad and which you are banned from eating for the duration, sometimes even forever.  It just so happens that those are usually the foods you love most. These are usually foods on which you have got hooked somehow and have cravings for them.  

Well, its good news time here, as many of the diets we feature allow you to eat as much good foods as you need - styeaks, vegetables, fruit and lots of other things that are good for you.   There are even many delicious and decadent desserts included in the diet:  chocolate cakes too! 

Desserts of all types can be part of a Diet That Works 

Our aim is to help YOU lose weight quickly but also safely.  We have tried many diets out and found quite a lot that do work, some that seem to make no difference, and even one that helped us load on more weight. 

On our main Diets thatWork.co.uk web site we identify the diets that we KNOW work, and tell you a little bit about them and, more importantly, tell you where you can find all the details on them.  We know how your important time is, so our web site and this blog are both responsive and can be consulted 'on the fly' on your phone, or on a tablet such as an iPad, or on a laptop or a full size desk top computer. 

We hope you find what you're looking for. 

Nicole Joy has some delicious recipes  

delicious and all part of Diets That Work