Jessica threw her measuring tape down in disgust. She could not believe her eyes! She had not even lost 1 inch. If anything she felt more bloated than before and she was quite sure that her clothes definitely felt tighter around the waist. She could feel her eyes begin to water and as she gave herself up to her emotions, she recalled the past few weeks of strict exercise and food deprivation. Were they all for nothing? Ever since her teenage years, she remembered being concious of her weight. As an ardent reader of magazines, she longed to look like one of the beautifully sculpted models. Somehow, this desire had transferred to numerous yo-yo diets. Initially she had lost some weight. However, she invariably came off the regime. Usually, she started binge eating, either due to emotions or food cravings. The result: Over the years she had achieved only to put on even more weight and, worst still, it was much more difficult to come off. The frustration of it distracted her from everything else. She felt like a failure, someone who had lost control of her own life. To top it all off, a recent trip for her annual blood test showed that her cholesterol and blood pressure were slightly high. The doctor told her that she really needed to do something about her weight if she did not want to get diabetes.

Jessica mentally went over her exercise regime again. She knew she had done the required 3 exercises per week and pushed herself to the maximum.She had recorded her reps and weights, increasing them according to instruction. Her diet was alright too. Ok, so she had not actually kept a food log like she was told to, but she knew that she had not eaten more calories than she should. Or had she? Jessica could not brush aside the niggling doubt that her diet might be the cause of her lack of weight loss. One doughnut could not have made that much of a difference, right? Neither could that  bag of chips her friends at work opened have wrecked so much damage.

As she went over this in her head, she decided to give the programme another go. With the food log this time. Over the course of the next week, Jessica kept a small notebook handy with her to write down everything that went past her mouth. By the third day of the food log, she could already see where it was that she had failed. The diet. Her friends at work had a tendency to buy snacks or chips during the day and munch on them. It had become so much of a second nature that Jessica did not even realize that this could have been busting her diet all this while. She was quite amazed to see the amount of low nutrient, high calorie food she consumed. This in addition to her normal, healthy meals. Despite that she had felt deprived of the ice cream or cheesecake she usually ate in front of the television at night when she was not on the programme.

There a little bit of Jessica in all of us. A lot of us tend to not keep a food log. We believe that we know what we are eating throughout the day. A lot of the time this is not true. We don’t realize the additional cookie here or half a doughnut there. However, this can play a very important role in our weight loss goals. It can mean the difference between reaching our goals or not reaching them. In the simple equation of calorie in vs calorie out, it can tip the scales to the other side.

A Krispy Kreme Doughnut has between 200 to 400 calories per doughnut. For a person who has a daily calorie intake of 1200 calories, that is up to a third of your calorie requirement! The rest of the 2/3 has to be divided into 4-5 meals including 3 main meals. So, unless we cut down our number of meals, which is definitely not the answer, we will exceed the calorie requirement for the day. This is not considering the havoc the fats and sugar combination is going to wreck in our body. So the answer to the question in the title is, Yes, a doughnut can bust a diet.

With the fast pace of modern living there are many conditions that go incorrectly diagnosed and treated by the medical community. One of these major conditions that warrant attention is that of thyroid dysfunction.

The thyroid gland which is based in the neck behind the thyroid cartilage and is responsible for your body’s metabolism and can affect every cell within the body. The rate at which you metabolise carbohydrates, fats and proteins is regulated by the thyroid and here are just a few symptoms of a underactive or hypothyroid.

* decreased body temperature
* weight gain
* decreased blood pressure+ dizziness when standing
* weak flabby skeletal muscles
* sluggishness and fatigue
* dry rough skin
* emotional disturbances and even psychosis

And the list goes on! The problem is that there are so many people particularly in fast paced westernised culture who are suffering from hypothyroid and for that matter hyperthyroid or an over active thyroid also.

An underactive thyroid has clear implications for the development of atherosclerosis through raised blood cholesterol levels. There have been studies that showed that when the thyroid glands were removed from rabbits blood cholesterol levels shot through the roof. In fact high cholesterol levels were used as the marker for thyroid function, along with metabolic rate, and core temperature.

Cholesterol levels have now been hijacked these days for the purpose of telling us that there is too much fat in our diet but dietary fat has very little implication on circulating cholesterol levels!

Once someone has been determined to have an underactive thyroid the influence of the medical companies has shifted the paradigm of natural thyroid prescription to thyroxine which by all accounts does not work as well its natural counterpart. This is primarily because pharmaceutical companies couldn’t patent the natural version and a heap of research designed to convince the medical practitioners that thyroxine, the synthetically manufactured product was a better choice.

Secondary hypothyroidism is often bought on by a failure in another system and particularly, when the adrenal glands become fatigued thyroid dysfunction ensues.

The fact is that most of us are in some stage of adrenal fatigue, high levels of cortisol, which whilst having anti-inflammatory properties, inhibits the production of DHEA which is a repair and growth hormone which helps us to heal at nighttime during sleep. Here are a few symptoms of adrenal fatigue:

* exhausted easily
* crave salty foods
* dizzy when standing up
* wounds heal slowly, bruises stay for a long time
* body becomes sensitive to touch and change in temperature
* blue or black circles under eyes

There are more. I have had quite a few clients who have been fobbed off with statements such as, ‘its all in your head’ or ‘you’re just imagining it.’ The sad thing is this is all very real

There are many things that you can do to help prevent or rehabilitate yourself from thyroid dysfunction or adrenal fatigue. Working on foundational principles of health can go along way to getting you back to optimal and wellbeing.

The next time you feel any of the above symptoms ask what your quality of life is like? Do you follow these principles?

* Thinking right
* Breathing correctly
* Drinking good quality water
* Eating for your genetic needs
* doing the right type of exercise
* good sleep wake cycles

These changes can be easily implemented with a little time and effort and can help to prevent any unwanted conditions such as thyroid dysfunction or adrenal fatigue!