More tips and a yummy shrimp salad recipe

A dear lady, who shall remain nameless, thinks she is doing her family a favor by peeling the tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables she serves them. Even before I started researching nutrition, I knew from somewhere that sometimes the peels have nutritional value that the rest of the fruit or vegetable does not have. Additionally, raw foods are also better than cooked or processed foods because of the trace minerals, vitamins, and amino acids that are lost. Even so, I refuse to eat orange peels.

Tip #5:
Avoid sugar--white sugar, brown sugar, cane sugar, beet sugar--any sugar at all. If you must have sweetness, sweeten some herb tea with stevia or eat raw fruit. Sugar is easy to digest and so goes straight to the blood stream. It also stimulates insulin release to take care of the sugar. Sugar that isn't used is stored as fat. Also, stimulating the insulin release process too often can cause insulin fatigue where the body doesn't know when the proper time to release insulin is and can aggravate pre-diabetic or hypoglycemic conditions. When the body doesn't know when to release insulin, more sugars and calories are stored as fat--kind of a survival reaction. If you feel deprived, give yourself a sugar hour once a week and make yourself sick for just a little bit. Then drink lots of water. My grandfather, a doctor, said that you need to drink one full glass of water for each piece of chocolate eaten.

Tip #6:
Avoid drinking juices like the plague. Juices usually do not have the body of the fruit with the pulp and additional tissues that contain the good nutritional stuff and also slow the digestion of the fruit. Fruit juices are concentrated fructose that go right to your blood stream and trigger insulin release and fat creation. If you stimulate insulin release too often, you can create a condition called insulin fatigue which can lead to diabetes or hypoglycemia and obesity. The only exception is lemon or orange juice used in cooking because it is combined with other foods.

Tip #7
Naps are good. Getting enough sleep is good. There have been several studies on the effects of sleep or lack of sleep on dieters and most agree on the results: Napping and adequate sleep increases the likelihood of losing fat while dieting. Too little sleep is bad and can make you fat and stupid and can cause dieters to lose muscle mass and water instead of fat. The stupid part comes because the brain doesn't work well without sleep, especially the parts that have to do with reflexes and memory.

Fantastic recipe for Mustard Shrimp Salad

Ingredients:
4 oz. of cooked, deveined shrimp, tails cut off
2 stalks of celery, diced into tiny cubes
3-4 green onions, sliced into thin coins
3-4 leaves of dark green lettuce, torn into bite-sized pieces
Optional: chopped cucumber, chopped bell pepper
Dressing
Juice of half a lemon
1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard
1/2 tsp. onion powder
Salt and pepper to taste
Optional: If you must have oil, then add a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil

Directions:
Combine all dressing ingredients (lemon juice, mustard, onion powder and oil). Toss with shrimp and let the mixture chill in the refrigerator for an hour.
Add celery, onions, and lettuce and toss with dressing and shrimp until everything is coated well.
Serve and eat immediately.