healthy weight

Those who choose to take part in Cura Romana’s online programs often fascinate me. Savvy about health, and keen to learn more, most are drawn to the program at first because they want to shed their excess weight permanently. But they want a lot more too. The majority are seeking personal transformation at every level—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Most are clear about how important health is to this process. They want wellbeing to blossom, then to continue to get better and better. They are often keen to create a new loving relationship with their body. They want more joy in their lives and more authentic freedom just to be who they are and feel good about it. Whew! A LIFE TRANSFORMED The goals that people tell us about while on one of our online programs are surprising, to say the least. But they bring me much pleasure as I work with these people. In many ways, their desires and goals sum up the kind of life change which I have long shared with others in my talks, workshops, books, and TV programs. Maybe this is nothing more than serendipity. In any case, I adore it. Why? Because, from a personal point of view, I find it so exciting and rewarding to work with such people—to stand beside them and take part in the life transformations they have committed themselves to. Just over four years ago, before we created our online programs, I was working one-to-one with individuals. The experience was a rich one for me. It affirmed that my goals for designing a worldwide internet based Cura Romana were clear: I wanted to build safe, gentle, rapid weight loss programs for men and women of any age. Instead of putting strain on the organism the way conventional slimming diets do, it had to encourage better hormonal balance, bring greater balance to the autonomic nervous system, and foster radiant wellbeing on every level. I was also determined that the program should not only help people recover their body’s natural shape. It needed to act as an entrance into healthy transformation and to enrich one’s quality of life. Finally, I wanted to design a protocol that could banish food cravings and show participants how to make excess weight lost on the program stay lost. PATH TO WELLBEING The story of how I became involved in all this goes way back to my early twenties. Already mother of three, I was seriously ill. In truth, I’d been unwell since late childhood. Twice, I had come close to dying of pneumonia. And, in addition to various other ailments—both emotional and physical—I began to struggle with my weight at adolescence. Then, in my mid-twenties, I was given the greatest gift that could have ever have been offered me: I met and became close friends with more than a dozen of the finest doctors and scientists in the English-speaking world—including two Nobel Laureates. Every one of these remarkable men and women generously shared with me their vast knowledge of natural healing, as well as the fundamentals of biology and physics when applied to living things. FULFILLING A DREAM From early on, I had been passionate about finding answers to my personal health challenges. These experts/friends could not have been more helpful in my search. Without their teachings, their patience and their guidance, I doubt that I would ever have been able to find my way, raise four healthy, happy children on my own, and accomplish the other things I have done since then. Many years later, when I was just beginning to design the Cura Romana programs, I made good use of what I had learned from them. I sat down to work out an easy-to-use program for safe, hunger-free, rapid weight loss, as well as gentle detox. I knew that such a program could not only help people recover their natural shape and weight, but transform their health and enrich the quality of their life. I was also determined to design a program that could help protect someone who, after getting rid of excess fat, would be free from having to regain it. So I called on the fundamentals of natural health I’d learned from my doctor and scientist friends—then combined this with my own research and discoveries made since then. FOOD SENSITIVITIES AND WEIGHT GAIN When it came to preventing someone who has lost weight from regaining it, the work of another British physician, Richard Mackarness, proved central to accomplishing this. In the mid 1970s, I had the privilege of participating in Richard’s research at Basingstoke Hospital. There I learned first-hand about the wide-ranging negative effects and implications of food sensitivities and food allergies. Working closely with Mackarness, I witnessed not only stunning physical reactions—sickness, pain and allergy flare-ups—caused by introducing a food which a particular body cannot handle. I became familiar with— even experienced firsthand—the emotional and psychological effects human beings can suffer when eating such foods. Reactions can be anything from mild depression and a sense of self-loathing to emotional breakdowns. Sometimes, even serious mental disorders can be triggered when a particular body reacts to a food or drink it can’t tolerate. A physician of great vision, author of many papers and books including Not All in the Mind, Richard Mackarness fought for, and single-handedly achieved, recognition for “clinical ecology” to be accepted as a respected medical discipline in the UK. He and his colleagues, Theron Randolph MD and Herbert Rinkel MD, established that food intolerance, food sensitivities and food allergies often cause a wide variety of illnesses. I suspect you can guess which one is right up there at the top of the list: weight gain and obesity. SLIM FOREVER Much of what I learned from them also stood me in good stead while building Cura Romana’s unique six week Consolidation program. That follows the Essential Spray+Food Plan for rapid weight loss. It is during the Consolidation process that participants learn the way to make sure that the fat they’ve shed need never return. Each body is unique. Foods that work for you may be anathema to me. To put it simply, during Consolidation you learn how to identify which foods your unique body “loves” and which foods it “hates.” Discovering what foods your body thrives on, and what foods it cannot handle, is essential to lifelong weight control. This discovery also brings other benefits, including an intensification of your body’s natural capacity to heal itself. While working out our Consolidation process I discovered something equally important. At first this amazed me: We are able to eat as much as our bodies want of the foods we thrive on, provided we minimize or eliminate the foods it can’t handle. This leads to no longer having to worry about weight gain. It can also put an end to calorie counting and food addictions forever. ONLINE POWER Right from their beginning, our Cura Romana programs have been designed to become multi-dimensional, internet-based experiences. I recorded audios and videos to guide participants day-by-day from beginning to end. Our programs are meant to become transformative gateways both to effective weight loss and optimal health. They are meant to help people rediscover their body’s natural size, shape and weight. This is why they provide powerful step-by-step guidance, so participants can move beyond the pain of past failures, frustrations and self-criticism towards a leaner body and a new sense of authentic freedom. My major frustration while writing the first Cura Romana book, as well as my New Cura Romana Weightloss Plan (which has just been published), has always been trying to come anywhere near to being able to give my readers the hands-on guidance that participants receive on the online experience. If you choose to follow the protocol using the new book, it’s absolutely essential that you read the book through twice and mark up everything you need to know. However you choose to do it, please remember that Cura Romana works only if the protocol is followed to the letter. You need to be well-informed and completely confident that you know what you are doing before you ever start it. You see, Cura Romana’s online programs are continuously evolving—something that cannot happen in a book. They become ever more effective, graceful and easy to follow. In no small part, this takes place thanks to the thousands worldwide with whom we continue to interact on both our Journey Programs and our Inner Circle Gold—during which I mentor each participant individually. HOW THEY WORK Day-after-day, the online programs guide you thanks to new audios and videos that you receive from beginning to end. It’s like having the benefit of a personal coach, without the huge cost you’d expect to pay for one. All four programs provide you with continually updated manuals plus the Essential Sprays you’ll need. You also get access to a Library for learning more, a Sanctuary for inner work, and two Kitchens with recipes—together with a first-rate help facility. Cutting-edge information is added regularly, enabling us to introduce you to new ways of thinking and living over the nine or twelve weeks while you are working with us. Our online programs have turned out to be a watershed for me, representing as they do my more than four decades of immersion in natural health and personal transformation. Many on them ask that we develop another program for people who have no need to lose weight but want to experience the same wellbeing and transformation that Cura Romana offers. We would like very much to be able to do this in the next couple of years. For the moment, we are deeply immersed in completing several new books and designing a new lesliekenton.com website which should go live within the next three weeks. In next week’s blog, I’ll share with you the frustrations, longings and self-limiting issues which prompt people to begin their own Cura Romana transformation. More often than not our most powerful transformations begin with a desperate need to end suffering. In the meantime, if you want to experience the best that Cura Romana has to offer, please do consider joining Aaron and me online. These Cura Romana protocols continue to bring participants experiences of renewal and transformation. They often expand creativity and fuel the capacity to live each moment from the core of our being with joy. They often help clear false beliefs that hold us back from fulfilling our potentials. When I tell you all this, it is not because I am trying to sell you an online program. It’s because I would so love for you to have the chance to experience all this for yourself.

Syndrome X Phenomenon As an awareness of the Syndrome X phenomenon of insulin resistance spread, researchers and clinicians have begun to understand that many of us who are not diabetic still experience insulin resistance. Responsible scientists began to ask questions about what causes it. The discoveries they are now making are nothing short of revolutionary. They not only offer us the power to slow the rate at which our bodies age. They are experimenting with protocols that can, potentially reverse negative conditions from hypertension, insulin resistance to cholesterol imbalances and depression, simply by changing the way you eat and live. This experience is one I became fascinated with when, several years ago, I made a television documentary in the Southern Hemisphere called To Age or Not To Age. It asked the question, “Can we slow aging by making simple nutritional changes?” We also wanted to know “Might it also be possible to reverse age-related degeneration that has already occurred?” And, finally, “Can these things be verified in medically measurable ways?” We decided to carry out what is known as a base-line study to find out. We sent all participants to have the standard test of medical parameters checked before the project began—from fasting insulin and blood sugar levels through cholesterol, triglycerides and blood pressure. These were carried out at a hospital which also had an excellent physiology laboratory, where exercise physiologists were able to establish each participant’s VO2Max, body fat percentage and lean body mass to fat ratio. To my surprise, every participant—including a 50 year old top athlete—showed abnormalities associated with Syndrome X. We then introduced our group to an Insulin Balance way of eating, which I devised. The experiment lasted only 5 weeks. Then we sent all our participants back to the hospital to have their parameters checked again. The results were mind-blowing. We had no idea that, after only 5 weeks of dietary changes, every abnormal medical parameter had normalized, except for cholesterol measurements in one woman, which took another few weeks to normalize. For me personally, the experiment confirmed yet again that the human body has a phenomenal capacity to heal itself, when given the opportunity to experience transformation at the deepest levels. This is a truth which, for the past four years, I have applied to helping to transform the lives of men and women all over the world, whom I have been mentoring on Cura Romana. The results continue to delight me.

All over the world, people are getting sicker by the year, while food manufacturers, government bodies, and the mainstream medical profession keep telling us to eat more low-fat-high-carb foods and plenty of unsaturated golden oils. They warn us to stay away from all the “dangerous” saturated fats and oils. So we go on buying convenience foods riddled with carbs and sugars, believing that we are doing the right thing to protect from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and mounting degenerative diseases that plague the Western World. Well, my friend, such advice from the powers-that-be is not just untrue—it is positively dangerous. To stay healthy, protect yourself from obesity, degenerative conditions, and early aging, it’s important that you avoid starchy carbs, hidden sugars, and all highly processed unsaturated oils. We have been indoctrinated with an irrational fear of fat because of inaccurate research carried out way back in the 1960s when absurd assumptions became turned into quasi-religious non-sense dogma. Since then, instead of protecting us from heart disease, obesity, and other degenerative conditions, what we’ve been told has made us highly susceptible to all these diseases. It’s time to get savvy about the fats—to learn which fats are life-destroying and which are health-enhancing and to change the way you eat. Here’s the truth: Polyunsaturated fats and oils turn rancid when heated. They turn into a health-destroying source of free radicals that do your body great harm. They attack cells and damage DNA. Recent, reliable scientific studies show a definite connection between consumption of these polyunsaturated oils and the development of cancer, as well as heart disease and many other illnesses. Here’s the gen: avoid these oils at all cost: Safflower, Corn, Sunflower, Soybean and Cottonseed. They are badly processed, and are often full of dangerous chemicals. As far as canola oil is concerned—commonly used in the manufacture of convenience foods—it turns rancid quickly and is associated with the development of fibrotic heart lesions. The oils and fats you want to eat to look after your health and to stay lean are these: butter from grass-fed animals, and tropical oils such as coconut oil. Coconut oil is great for cooking. Extra-virgin olive oil is ideal for salad dressings. These are quality fats which, eaten on their own, or together with protein but without an abundance of starchy carbohydrates and sugar alleviate hunger and act as a great source of energy throughout the day. Eating too little of these good fats can lead to an experience of sitting down to a meal and, no matter how much you eat, still craving more food at the end of it. These natural fats let you know when your body is satisfied. They also help balance your hormones while significantly enhancing how you look and feel. Low-fat foods fill our supermarket shelves, attracting ignorant consumers trying to be good and eat what they’ve been told to eat. Manufactured convenience foods have become a roaring financial success story for food manufacturers. So people eat low-fat foods, believing that these are good for them, without realizing that manufacturers, in preparing low-fat menus, have replaced fat with sugar in their wares. We have been told the false notion that all saturated fats are dangerous. Back to the good oils: Olive oil is a monounsaturated fat and one of the safest vegetable oils you can use. It is well suited to dressings and can be heated, but only to moderate temperatures. Make sure that the Extra Virgin Olive Oil you buy is cloudy (not filtered) and a golden-yellow color. Coconut oil is your safest, healthiest choice for cooking since it remains stable, even at high temperatures. It also boasts antiviral and antibacterial properties. The other good, and often forgotten, saturated fat is butter but only from cows who have been grazed on green grass for at least part of their life. Here’s the good news: Natural fats eaten on their own or together with protein, without a lot of carbohydrates and sugar, will not cause the laying down of fat on your body. Neither will they create insulin resistance, as polyunsaturated oils, grain and cereal-based carbohydrates and sugars can. This is the most difficult truth for most people to grasp when we have been schooled for more than half a century in inaccurate and dangerous high-carbs-low-fat approaches to weight loss and protection from illness and obesity. Yet, when it comes to becoming radiantly well and staying that way, you need to grasp this truth and put it into practice. One more thing: Be sure to take a top quality Omega 3 supplement each day. (See below for my recommendation.) And from this moment on, eat GOOD FATS and thrive. You’ll love it. Life Extension, Super Omega-3, EPA/DHA With Sesame Lignans & Olive Fruit Extract, 240 Softgels The body needs fatty acids to survive and is able to make all but two of them: linoleic acid (LA), in the omega-6 family, and alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) in the omega-3 family. These two fatty acids must be supplied by the diet and are therefore considered essential fatty acids (EFAs). Omega-3 fatty acids, found in coldwater fish (and fish oil), perilla and flaxseed oils, are essential elements of a healthy diet. Omega-3 oils contain eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which are usually lacking in the typical Western diet, which is filled with foods containing high amounts of omega-6 fats. EPA and DHA can be synthesized in the body from ALA, but EPA and DHA synthesis may be insufficient under certain conditions and for most people that consume Western diets. Order Life Extension, Super Omega-3 from iherb Carlson Labs, Super Omega·3 Gems, Fish Oil Concentrate, 1000 mg, 250 Soft Gels Medical Scientists Internationally are encouraging people to eat more fish. Fish body oil is the only major source of the polyunsaturated Omega-3's EPA and DHA. For those individuals who do not eat an oily fish diet, Carlson offers Omega-3's in easy-to-swallow soft gelatin capsules. Carlson Super Omega-3 Gems soft gels contain 1000 mg (1 gram) of a special concentrate of fish body oils from deep, cold water fish which are especially rich in the important Omega-3's EPA and DHA. Order Carlson Labs, Super Omega·3 Gems from iherb

In the so-called civilized world, the population continues to grow sicker by the year, while food manufacturers, government bodies and the mainstream medical profession keep telling us that we need to eat more low-fat-high-carb foods as well as lots of unsaturated oils and stay away from saturated fats and oils if we want to stay healthy. So people go on buying convenience foods chock full of carbs and sugars, the golden oils and products containing them all the while believing that they are doing the right thing if want to protect themselves from heart disease, cancer, diabetes and all the other degenerative diseases that plague the Western World. Well, my friends, all such advice is not only untrue. It is positively dangerous. To stay healthy, protect yourself from obesity, degenerative conditions and early aging, you must dump the starchy carbs and hidden sugars, all those highly processed unsaturated oils and the packaged convenience foods which contains them. It’s time to get savvy about the right kind of fats and introduce them to your meals. They can bring energy, beautiful skin, and real protection from early aging and chronic illnesses. By the way, they can also make your meals taste great. STOP BLAMING YOURSELF In case you think it’s your fault that you happen to be suffering with a chronic condition or you are overweight, think again. Like most conscientious human beings, you have only been trying to follow the guidelines that doctors, governments and the media tells us will keep us well, slim and protected from heart disease. Here’s the truth: The guidelines we have been given ever since World War II have not only been all wrong, they have been truly dangerous to our health. The powers-that-be have instilled in us irrational fear of fat, largely as a result of the poor research and conclusions drawn back in the 1960s—when Ancel Keys and others were trying to figure out how to prevent heart disease. One group of so-called experts jumped to the conclusion that dietary fat was the culprit. Before long, their rash assumptions were turned into a quasi-religious dogma that has stuck. The low-fat, high-carb-and-sugar eating propounded by them, instead of protecting us from heart disease, obesity and other degenerative conditions, has made us highly susceptible to all of them. LIES CONTINUE Here’s another common fat fallacy: “The Western diet has increased in saturated fat over the last century.” Just the opposite is true. At the turn of the last century, most of the population still got their fatty acids from saturated animal-based sources, such as lard, butter, and tallow. They were better off for it. Then, from 1910 to 1970 in the United States, the proportion of animal fats eaten declined from 83% of all fats eaten to 62%, and butter consumption went from 18 to 4 pounds per person per year—all because of the invention and promotion of margarines. Meanwhile, what did increase exponentially was the quantity of fats we began to take in, in the form of chemically refined unsaturated vegetable oils, margarines, trans-fatty acids and junk fats. The results of all this? Our health has continued to decline. By the way, it’s worthwhile taking a look at how well we’ve fared in combating heart disease and obesity since we began shunning animal fats and eating the masses of the carbs they recommended. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey shows that, since 1980, obesity alone has grown to epic proportions, right from the very year the government’s guidelines were published. THE SKINNY ON FATS From the 1960s onwards, governments worldwide have been telling us to eat less fat and more carbohydrate which they figured would make up for the fat we no longer ate. Low-fat foods began to appear on our supermarket shelves for keen and hungry consumers; they quickly became a major financial success story for food manufacturers. We ate baked potatoes instead of fries with our meals, and thought that we were taking the healthy option. We ate low-fat foods thinking that these were good for us, without realizing that food manufacturers, in preparing their low-fat menus, had replaced the fat with sugar. Meanwhile, we were warned against all saturated fats, told that they are dangerous, and urged to eat more polyunsaturated oils such as sunflower oil, safflower oil, peanut oil—all those golden oils that still fill our supermarket shelves. These oils and margarines were held up as beneficial for protecting us from heart disease. Both of these directives turned out to be big fat lies. BEWARE PROCESSED OILS Polyunsaturated fats and oils—which we have long been urged to eat—turn rancid quickly when heated. All the golden oils most people still believe are good for them turn into health-destroying sources of free-radicals that can do the body a great deal of harm. They attack our cells and damage our DNA. Recent, reliable scientific studies show a link between consumption of these processed polyunsaturates and cancer as well as heart disease. DUMP THE GOLDEN OILS Safflower, Corn, Sunflower, Soybean and Cottonseed Oils all tend to be badly processed, using all sorts of unpleasant chemicals. Avoid them. Canola oil, which fills many of our ready-made food products, has been associated with fibrotic heart lesions. It is high in sulfur and turns rancid easily. Margarines are full of trans-fatty acids. Shun them. There’s something else we now know about these oils that will probably surprise you. Analysis of the fat in clogged arteries reveals that only about 26% is saturated fat. The rest is made up of polyunsaturates. So here’s the bottom line: The heart’s preferred source of food when under stress is good old “unhealthy” saturated fat. OMEGA 3 BENEFITS Omega-6 and omega 3 fatty acids, when in the right balance, help your body in all sorts of ways. They increase your cells’ sensitivity to insulin, helping your body regulate its blood sugar. They increase metabolic rate and fat metabolism, so more of your stored fat can be burnt as energy. Natural foods rich in the omega-6 oils include avocados, nuts, flax seeds, and spirulina. Paleontologists have discovered that our ancestors consumed them in the ratio of 1:1 or 2:1 (omega-6 to omega 3 fatty acids). However today, in our Western diets, the balance between these two fatty acids has become all screwed up. Modern diets contain a ratio of about 22:1—far too high for optimal health. This excess can cause all sorts of problems, from weight gain to cancer. What can we do about it? For a start, you never have to worry about getting enough omega-6s. They’re everywhere. What you do need to do is increase your intake of omega 3 fatty acids]. A great way of doing this is to start taking a good-quality fish oil supplement. EAT IN ABUNDANCE Have no fear of the saturated fats found in meat and butter from grass-fed animals, and tropical oils like coconut oil. Coconut oil is great for cooking. Extra-virgin olive oil is great for salad dressings. Eaten on their own, or together with protein, but without an abundance of starchy carbohydrates, good quality natural fats alleviate hunger and act as an excellent source of energy throughout the day. Eating too little good fat cab lead to the experience of sitting down to a meal and, no matter how much you eat, still craving food at the end of it. Good natural fats let you know when your body is satisfied. Introducing the right kind of fats to your meals also helps balance hormones while significantly enhancing how you look and feel. MEET THE GOOD OILS Cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil, cold-pressed walnut oil, cold-pressed fax-seed oil, avocado oil, sesame oil and coconut oil are all excellent for salad dressings. Eat them and thrive. Olive oil is monounsaturated rather than polyunsaturated—one of the safest vegetable oils you can use. It is well-suited to dressings and can be heated, but only to moderate temperatures. Make sure the Extra Virgin Olive Oil you buy is cloudy (not filtered) and a golden-yellow color. Sesame oil is reasonably stable and can also be used on salads as can cold-pressed walnut oil and avocado oil. Coconut oil is a highly saturated oil/fat and is the safest, healthiest choice for cooking, because it remains stable even at high temperatures. It also boasts antiviral and antibacterial properties. DON’T FORGET BUTTER Millions of shoppers buy margarine in the belief that it’s “better for you than butter.” This is another baseless opinion, forced upon us by bad science and multinational food manufacturers. The process used to turn out margarine, known as hydrogenation, does horrendous things to the already-rancid vegetable oils it is made from. Margarines also contain all sorts of additives you wouldn’t want in your body. It is not surprising that they have now become associated with the development of both cancer and heart disease. Butter on the other hand contains many essential nutrients. Look for butter made from the milk of grass-fed animals if you can find it. Experiments comparing the health of margarine eaters with butter eaters continually find in butter’s favor. In one study, the risk of developing heart disease for butter users was half that of eaters of margarine. Infants and children especially benefit from butter, which fosters normal growth and development. Use this delicious stuff liberally—and without guilt—in the knowledge that your body will thank you for it. THE LAST WORD OF ADVICE Fats and starchy carbs like pasta, bread, and pizza do not mix. Eating them together bring about what is known as the Randle Effect: When lots of fat and carbohydrates are eaten together, as they often are in the standard Western diet, the fats get burnt as fuel, while the carbohydrates are converted to glucose. The glucose in turn is converted into more body fat, throwing any overweight, insulin-resistant person into a terrible vicious circle, where hunger and carbohydrate cravings lead to overeating, followed by an inevitable increase in blood sugar and insulin levels as well as body fat deposits and yet more cravings. The irony is that, for a long time, we have been blaming dietary fat for this, when this phenomenon is actually caused by a high starchy carbohydrate intake, especially in the presence of the junk fats found in margarines, golden oils, and convenience foods. Natural fats eaten on their own or together with protein, but without an abundance of carbohydrates, do not cause the laying down of fat in the body. Nor do they cause insulin resistance. This is perhaps the most difficult thing to grasp for those of us who have been highly schooled in the high-carbs-low-fat approach to weight loss and age protection. Yet, when it comes to staying well it is essential to understand.

Your skin will not age by accident, or just because time goes by. Skin loses its tone and texture whenever the energy order—the psychological and biological integrity of the living matrix, that whole interconnectedness that is your body—is undermined. All sorts of stuff can cause this to happen. But nothing is more sinister and insidious than chronic high levels of blood sugar and insulin, which threaten most people over the age of 25 or 30. Stop them in your body, and you will not only slow skin aging. You can actually reverse its signs. THE GREAT DESTROYER Sugar actually destroys your skin. And I’m not just talking about the white stuff that sits in bowls. Most of the foods that people eat these days—from pasta and bread to packaged cereals and bagels—flood the bloodstream with glucose, within a very few minutes of entering the body. This carries serious consequences for the skin. CHECK OUT YOUR ANCESTORS The reasons for all of this are genetic, and very simple. Despite this fact, for the last 70 years, they have eluded most so-called scientists, nutritionists and medical doctors. Here’s the truth: Grain-based and sugary foods are recent interventions. For over a million years, humans never ate them. Because genetic adaptation is a slow process—it can take one hundred thousand years, believe it or not, for a significant alteration in a gene to take place—our bodies lack the ability to deal with these foods in large quantities. Yet grains and sugar-rich foods—many riddled with junk fats and chemicals to boot—make up the largest portion of most people’s diets these days. When our bodies are forced to handle them (and most governments, doctors and food-manufacturers are still trying to sell us the idea that low-fat, high-carb diets are good for our health), our skin—in fact our whole body—rebels. CUT THE CARBS What form this insurrection takes depends on just how vulnerable we are genetically. It can show up as adult-onset or type 2 diabetes; obesity; energy swings; raised HDL cholesterol; or chronic fatigue. Eating lots of these kinds of carbs and sugars can also cause—and few people or even doctors are as yet aware of this—all sorts of common degenerative diseases, from cancer to arthritis and coronary heart disease. When it comes to skin, the sugar monster gets busy fabricating wrinkles, sags, puffy faces, lackluster complexions. This creates a situation where, having learned all this, you wonder whether you have the energy to do anything about it. THE WRINKLE MONSTER Sugar—the wrinkle monster—has two faces. To escape his insidious attacks, you need to address both. First, there’s the all-encompassing glucose/insulin battle you need to win. After years of living the way most of us do—on convenience foods, fabricated from grains, cereals, and an infinite number of sugars and syrups—this undermines good genetic health. The other face of the sugar monster focuses on the damage that excess glucose does to the body’s proteins. It attacks skin cells and collagen fibers, producing what is known as advanced glycosylation end products. These nasties, conveniently known as AGEs, are like terrorists that wreak havoc within the living matrix, causing collagen fibers to lose their ability to maintain order. AGEs do this by making collagen fibers to cross link. This results in the formation of wrinkles, sags and bags on your face and elsewhere. WIN THE AGING WAR It’s not just one or two anti-aging battles you need to win to make a significant difference to your skin, regardless of your age. Cutting out the high-carb stuff from your diet needs to reduce your blood sugar and insulin levels. By doing so this counters the formation of AGEs—as well as detoxifying your skin and your body as a whole. Radical though it may sound doing this will set you on the right track both to skin rejuvenation and to whole body health and vitality. Of course, knowing this stuff is not enough. You have to take action. Every skin improvement and de-aging process is inexorably woven together with all of the other within your entire living matrix. If you want powerful anti aging skin care, you need to address the whole shebang. By altering the way you eat, live, and look after your body internally and externally, your skin not only looks younger and more beautiful. It will bring your whole being access to levels of energy, emotional balance and well-being that turn the dream of living a full and creative life into reality. This is how to create a revolution in the look and health of skin. And here’s the great news: This can also bring you beauty at the deepest level, transforming your whole experience of yourself in the process.

An exotic herb which grows in subtropical areas of South America, stevia is replete with non caloric sugary molecules. This is the reason for its sweet flavor. Stevia has sweetened herbal drinks since pre-Columbian times. Its properties were first recorded by a botanist named Antonio Bertoni in 1887, who wrote about ways the natives of Paraguay used it. Others have discovered stevia in the past fifty years and made good use of it. Japan and the United States have done extensive research and safety testing on the plant. Their research shows that this marvelous sweet herb is non-toxic, safe for diabetics and beneficial for weightloss as well as daily use for yourself and family. More good news: Stevia is not a source of nutrition for bacteria in the mouth nor for yeasts and fungi such as Candida Albicans in the body. A few years ago, following some rather bogus animal research promoted by Monsanto — who produce much of the artificial sweeteners in the world — the European Parliament banned the sale of stevia in Britain and Europe. There is much pressure at the moment to lift that ban. In the meantime, if you live in the EU, you can, without difficulty, order stevia online from herbal shops, either in your own country or another European country, including the UK. It is widely available in shops and stores in the United States and Canada, Australia and New Zealand and most other countries of the world. Stevia is great for all sorts of reasons on Cura Romana Spoonable Stevia By Stevita: Spoonable Stevia by Stevita uses only stevia extract with at least 95% pure glycosides (extremely sweet tasting ingredients of the Stevia herb leaves), and a little erythritol, a crystal granulated naturally produced filler found in fruits, vegetables and grains. It is best for baking and sprinkling. Order Spoonable Stevia By Stevita from iherb ENGLISH TOFFEE STEVIA: Wisdom Natural, SweetLeaf, Liquid Stevia, English Toffee Sweet Leaf liquid stevia with all natural flavors is convenient and easy to use. As a supplement, add this nutritious stevia to water, tea, coffee, milk, sparkling water, protein shakes, plain yogurt or anything else you can imagine. It comes in many different flavors including lemon but English Toffee flavor is the best by far. Order English Toffee Stevia from iherb ORDERING FROM IHERB.COM: If you decide to order any products from Iherb.com, you will automatically receive $5 or $10 off your first order. Their products are the cheapest and best in the world…I use them for everything no matter where I am. Get it sent to you via DHL. It will be with you in three to four working days… iHerb.com ship all over the world very cheaply. IMPORTANT - Do not be fooled by the artificially made Stevia products such as Truvia and Purevia. These products are not the natural Stevia plant. To learn more read my post here called beware of Truvia.

More than anything else on earth except air to breathe, your body needs water for energy, for health, and for beauty. The water you drink plays a major part in your ability to digest your foods and absorb nutrients, thanks to enzymes which are themselves mostly water. If you fail to drink enough water between meals, your mouth becomes low in saliva and digestion suffers. Water is also the medium through which wastes are eliminated from your body. Each time you exhale you release highly humidified air—about two big glasses worth a day. Your kidneys and intestines eliminate another 6 or so glasses every 24 hours, while another 2 glasses worth are released through the pores of your skin. That makes 8 glasses a day—and this is on a cool day. When it gets hot, when you are exercising, or when you are working hard, the usual 10 glasses lost in this way can triple. On average, in a temperate climate—not sweating from exertion or heat—we need about 6 pints a day for optimal health, although few of us consume as much as 2. The important thing to remember is that how thirsty you are is not a reliable indication of how much water you need to drink. If you want to grow lean and stay that way you need to do as French women have done for decades. Keep a large bottle or 2 of pure, fresh mineral water on your desk and make sure you consume your quota of this clear, delicious, health-giving drink. Here's how to figure it: water and weight loss MAGIC Divide your current weight in kilos by 8. If you weigh 58 kilos, then 58 divided by 8 equals 7.25 big glasses. Then round the figure upwards to the next glass and there you have it: 8 glasses a day. But remember that is only a base calculation for a cool day. You will need a lot more during exercise, or on a hot day. Provided you do not suffer from a kidney or liver disease, drinking 8 big glasses or more of water a day not only helps you lose weight and keep it off permanently; it improves the functioning of your whole body. There is another way in which drinking optimal quantities of water plays a central role in detoxifying the body for regeneration. It has to do with your kidneys. The kidneys are responsible for recycling all the water in your body—some 800 glasses of it a day—and for filtering out any wastes present before they can lower immunity, create fatigue, or make you feel hungry even though you have had enough to eat, and cause the kind of water retention which plagues so many who have gone on and off slimming diets for years. The filtering mechanism responsible for all this in the kidneys is made up of millions of microscopic bodies known as glomeruli. They identify waste products such as urea which need to be removed, as well as screening out other chemicals and unwanted metals and minerals, while at the same time pouring back into the bloodstream the minerals you do need and regulating your body's acid-alkaline balance. DRINK WATER—END WATER RETENTION When some part of you needs more water, your kidneys make sure it arrives. For instance, when you are hot and sweating, a message is sent to the pituitary gland in the head telling it to release the anti-diuretic hormone which in turn tells your kidneys to let more water be reabsorbed into the blood. Your urine at such times can become highly concentrated and a dark color. But provided you replenish the water you are losing in sweat by drinking more, your kidneys remain happy and well-functioning, and the appetite/thirst messages from your brain do not become confused. When your body's water level gets too low, however, from not drinking enough, your kidneys cannot carry out their cleansing efficiently and the liver's role in detoxification becomes overburdened. Water is also the world's best natural diuretic. If your body tends to retain water, this is often because you don't drink enough, so it tries its best to hold on to the water there is. Once you do begin to drink enough, this tendency to water logging decreases and usually disappears completely. And by the way, if you are worried about puckered thighs, the best way to help eliminate them easily is simply to drink more water. Keep a liter and a half bottle on your desk or in your room and see that you drain it every day, regardless of whatever else you drink. Our next foray into water power will look at the vital issue facing all of us today in our polluted world: How to provide for yourself and your family real pure water— free of contamination and full of living vitality that is imparted to you when you drink it. Coming soon...

All artificial sweeteners increase your insulin resistance, impair your memory and disrupt your neurological functioning. Do not use them! It is hard to believe the extent to which they have taken over the world. The artificial sweetener market worldwide is measured in many billions, and keeps growing. Here is a breakdown: aspartame is responsible for 27.9% of the market, sucralose, claims another 27.9%, while cyclamate holds a 13.1% share, acesulfame-K gets 5.2% and neotame 1.4%. I continue to be flummoxed by it all. How can billions of people be persuaded into putting this kind of junk into their bodies, adding these products to their coffee and their foods, as well as swallowing sodas and other drinks that are riddled with them? If you value your body, your mind and your health, please STOP USING THEM! THE STUDIES One study, carried out over 14 years, showed that eating and drinking sugar-sweetened and artificially-sweetened drinks makes you prone to a higher risk of type II diabetes. Another, lasting over seven years, found that drinking artificially-sweetened drinks is associated with an almost 50% greater change in BMI. Researchers reported that a likely reason for this is that artificial sweeteners increase food intake, as well as a greater desire for sweetness, so you eat more food. Obese subjects given the artificial sweetener sucralose showed increased insulin levels and insulin resistance. In both human and animal studies, the artificial sweeteners sucralose, saccharine, and aspartame also exerted a substantial negative effect on gut bacteria which increases glucose intolerance. In relation to aspartame, Executive Director of the Center for Science in the Public interest (CSPI) Michael F Jacobson states, "Aspartame has been found to cause cancer—leukaemia, lymphoma and other tumors—in laboratory animals. It shouldn't be in the food supply.” PROTECT YOUR BRAIN Dana Small, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, has been doing excellent work examining the effects that artificial sweeteners exert on behavior and brain in humans and animals. She discovered that appetite comes from the hippocampus as well as the hypothalamus. When mice were fed on the artificial sweetener acesulfame-K, they developed impaired memory as a result of neurological dysfunctions in the hippocampus. A learned association takes place between the flavor of a food you eat and the ability of a food to alter your blood glucose. Your body is smart. You cannot feed it on rubbish like artificial sweeteners. When you do, it hunts for real food to satisfy its needs. By now, we have a huge volume of evidence showing that artificial sweeteners foster weight gain. PLEASE HEAR THIS Artificial sweeteners of any kind can be much worse for you than sugar. There is a lot of evidence to back this up. Even natural sweeteners such as honey and agave, which most people look upon as “healthy choices”, are not great. Agave is highly processed, even when it says “organic” on the label. It has a higher fructose content than any other commercial sweetener. In truth, it is little more than an over-hyped, laboratory generated, highly-condensed fruit syrup without nutritional value. In small quantities and in its raw form, honey has much to offer, provided it is real, pure, raw honey. But most honey these days is of very poor quality and adulterated. Even real raw honey, which is almost impossible to come by, consists of 53% fructose—which you don’t want to take in very much of. What about the sugar alcohols? These are easy to spot as their names end in “ol” like xylitol, malitol, glycerol, lacitiol, mannitol, sorbitol, glucitol. They are less sweet than sugar, but they are by no means calorie-free. You see, these sugar alcohols are not absorbed completely in your body. Eating them can create diarrhoea as well as abdominal gas. Some of them used regularly can even spike blood sugar as much as a baked potato or dinner roll can. Xylitol is probably the best if you are going to use any of them, but it must be used only in small quantities and not regularly. And you must read labels carefully. Personally, I choose to leave all of them alone. SAFE ALTERNATIVES Stevia is far and away the best natural sweetener in the world. But make sure you buy a good quality whole plant stevia (see my recommendations below.) Stay away from Truvia, Purevia and one or two other so-called stevia products which have extracted the sweetest component of the stevia plant—Rebaudioside A—out of the plant, grossly distorting the integrity of the plant as a whole. It’s the synergistic effect of all the natural ingredients in the plant that produce its overall health-giving qualities, which include "built-in protection" against potentially damaging effects. Working with people on our Cura programs, I find that artificial sweeteners disagree with many. Stay away from them. For my money, the two best stevias, which you can purchase from iHerb.com as well as from Amazon.co.uk, are these: Natural Wisdom Sweet Leaf Liquid Stevia Natural Wisdom Sweet Leaf Liquid Stevia, which comes in a dropper bottle with all natural flavors and is convenient and easy to use. Add it to coffee, milk, sparkling water, protein shakes, plain yogurt or anything else you can imagine. It comes in many delicious flavors but English Toffee is the best by far. Take a look at it here: Order Natural Wisdom Sweet Leaf Liquid Stevia from iherb Spoonable Stevia by Stevita Spoonable Stevia by Stevita, which uses only stevia extract with at least 95% pure glycosides (extremely sweet tasting ingredients of the Stevia herb leaves), and a little erythritol—a crystal granulated naturally produced filler found in fruits, vegetables and grains. This brand of stevia is best for baking and sprinkling on yogurt and anything else you are making. Take a look at it here: Order Spoonable Stevia by Stevita from iherb I use stevia a lot and love it. You will too. It should be your number one choice for your own wellbeing and that of your family. Go for it and leave the junk behind.

Within each one of us, thin or fat, there lives a joyous creative spirit. It is the spirit of the child - of life itself - a completely individual nature which is constantly seeking freedom simply to be what it is and to do what it wants to do. The world we live in as we grow up seldom leaves space for that unique spirit to develop fully. Our parents, our education, our culture is continually feeding us with rules about what we should and shouldn't do - should and shouldn't be. It is a little like getting up each morning and having to put on your straightjacket before you begin the day. For many people—both men and women—weight control has become part of that straightjacket. They worry constantly about how or what to eat or not to eat. They agonize over one or two pounds - or fifteen - gained or lost and they treat themselves like naughty children who need controlling lest they get out of hand and eat something they shouldn't. A person in any kind of straightjacket is a person disempowered. It is a person who does not trust himself or herself and who to a greater or lesser degree lives in fear - fear of food, fear of what he or she might do, fear of disapproval from a society impassioned by notions of thinness. I have known that struggle. I have lived it myself and I see evidence of it all around me in women caught in the jaws of bulimia, anorexia or compulsive eating, and in men who overindulge in alcohol or fatty foods, struck down by a heart attack in the prime of life. This has always seemed a terrible waste. POWER TO TRANSFORM Thirty years ago I began to ask questions like: Why do so many people struggle with weight in our society when the vast majority in other cultures never even seem to grow fat? What causes the distortions to our bodies not only in body size and fat deposits, but in the degenerative conditions, from heart disease to rheumatoid arthritis that come in their wake? Is it really weakness of character or lack of willpower that makes us all eat too much and gain weight? And - most important of all - is there a way of eating and living that enables someone who is carrying too much fat around to eat and live so that whatever distortions have already appeared will disappear quite naturally as part of the process of regenerating the body through food and exercise? MY SEARCH FOR ANSWERS So I read many books and papers, listened to dozens of lectures from physicians and scientists and interviewed a number of doctors personally who claimed to have found answers. Some of their answers were useful, but not until I was introduced to the work of ATW Simeons did I come to understand that even the most genuinely helpful discoveries about why we get fat—and why every slimming diet we follow—almost invariably lead sooner or later back to our regaining weight we have lost. Why? Because each and every one of them, no matter how sincere or well meaning, ignored the most important truth of all: Simeons’ work stands alone even amongst the findings of many brilliant and sincere scientists and doctors—from Atkins to Sir Robert McCarrison who have contributed so much to sound dietary practice. What makes Simeons unique is that he alone discovered that overweight, obesity and all the anguish that accompanies them is in no way caused by a lack of willpower or simple greed. Neither can it be permanently cleared by putting people on a slimming regime. These conditions represent a significant metabolic disorder. Until this metabolic disorder is dealt with we will simply go on forever taking diet pills, shedding fat and then regaining it, along with all the inner grief, disappointment and shame we suffer each time this happens. Even better, Simeons discovered where the locus of overweight lay in the body, and how to create a protocol that would give a man or woman’s overweight body a kind of permission to restore normal balanced functioning to that area in the brain, thereby clearing not only unwanted fat but enhancing a person’s overall health in life-changing ways. THIN FOR WHAT? In the Western world we have long been possessed by an obsession with changing the shape of our bodies, especially trying to make it thinner, using one diet after another. Yet making a body thinner is not always the best thing to do - either for its health or its good looks. A thin body is a wimpish body. It is a body depleted of energy and of power. When you are lean you are strong, you have sleek muscles, good tone, and you can feast heartily on wholesome, natural foods in keeping with your body’s unique food needs, enabling you to stay that way. You are also highly resistant to illness and early ageing as the years pass and you feel comfortable and at ease in your body. This is a very different experience from the anxiety over thinness which disempowers so many men and women. Leanness, created by restoring healthy balance and functioning to the body’s fat and appetite control center, brings a sense of power with it - a sense of being in control of your own life which is a far cry from the inadequacy many feel as they continue to battle against weight gain with conventional slimming diets. I believe it is time we forgot about thin and choose instead to go lean from inside out. This calls for revolution. COME THE REVOLUTION - Diets That Work To revolutionize means to change completely and fundamentally - your body and your life. It is not a word chosen lightly but because it most accurately describes the powerful positive transformation that takes place in how you look and feel when you transform your appetite and fat control center so it works again, throw out convenience foods loaded with bad carbs, hidden sugar, junk fats and chemicals, and begin to feed heartily on the kind of foods your individual body loves, drink large quantities of pure water and strengthen your muscle mass through simple exercise that your body loves, be it dancing, yoga, swimming or what-have-you. The word lean means `muscular...containing little or no fat.' Being lean is as different from being thin as Cura Romana is from all the quick fix slimming diets you may have tried over the years which have slowly but inexorably eroded your energy and increased the sense of disenchantment with your body.