Weight loss hints and tips

In planning a meal plan, the most important step is to make efforts to lower your intake of fat, salt and refined carbohydrates.

Some low carb diet tips:
* Make reduced carbohydrate breadcrumbs for deep fried foods. Whilst you can sometimes buy reduced carb bread crumbs, you may make them at home by using low carb bread. All you have to do is toast the reduced carbohydrate bread in the oven on a baking tray. Once it is well browned, whizz it in your blender. To store, keep in an airtight container.

* Use splenda instead of sugar. Most recipes that require sugar can be adapted to make use of a sugar substitute like splenda. It is not exactly the same so you will need to do a bit of trial and error and it may not work for everything, but it does a decent job for the most part.

Lycopene super foods
(includes apricot, papaya & baby jackfruit)

The phytochemical lycopene is a non-synthetic compound used to color foods and member of the same group of phytochemicals as carotene. This chemical is accountable for the deep red colour of quite a few natural foods.

Fortunately, unlike numerous nutrients, it does not become less effective if cooked but is genuinely improved by the cooking process.

. Its most valuable health contribution is that it works as an antioxidant and appears to help lower the risks of cancer.

Lycopene is the most powerful carotenoid quencher of singlet oxygen, which is correlated with aging of the skin. It's also believed to curtail the development of diseases affecting arterial blood vessels.