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Your body’s performance is similar to that of a car.

We all know a higher quality of fuel gets better results.

Think about your car’s engine. If you use low-grade fuel (which blends additives and non-petroleum products with regular fuel) over a long period it affects the performance of your engine.

In time this leads to additional wear and tear of your engine parts.  This was experienced first hand  in Victoria some years ago when service station operators used non-petroleum based fuel blended with regular petrol because the product attracted less excise duty.

Try this simple (but potentially expensive) experiment.  When you purchase a new car use a higher grade fuel/petrol from day one.  After  12 months, switch to a lower grade petrol and see if there’s any noticeable difference in performance or reliability.

You’ll see that when you use a better grade fuel with higher octane you get greater performance.

Like your car, your body also works optimally when you put the right fuel in. Put garbage in and you get garbage out. To get greater performance  eat a healthy balanced diet filled with plenty of fruit, vegetable and lean meats, and minimal processed food.

And, like a car engine, we can initially fill up with lower grade fuel during the early parts of our life and everything appears to be okay.

But as we get older things start to break down. We become more susceptible to illness and  predisposed to the high-risk groups for developing certain diseases – cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol or Type II diabetes.This is the cumulative effect of slow bodily deterioration over a long period.

The secret is to never become complacent.  Even if you’ve eaten a poor diet all your life without detrimental effects, that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.

Think of it like small deposits in a bank. In the short term there’s no noticeable improvement in your balance. But at some point, you will  get to a critical mass, particularly after the compounding effect of interest over time.

And if you decide later in life to open a bank account and start saving, you can still accumulate money.  However, there’s no guarantee you’ll have as substantial a balance after 10 years of saving compared to a lifetime of steady habits.

Written by Andrew Talati

The roller coaster style diet where you totally deprive yourself of all enjoyable foods is not sustainable over the long-term and will ultimately lead to failure.

Like anything in life, from spending money on little luxuries to indulging in yummy food including the usual suspects such as ice cream or chocolate, it’s okay to treat yourself every now and again. However, once you’ve crossed that line from occasional treating to consuming these sugary/fatty foods on a more frequent basis, then you start going into energy surplus.

If you’re trying to lose weight by removing all the indulgent food and beverages from your diet you will tend to consume this type of food excessively once you reach your goal, if you haven’t already given up your diet because it’s just too hard.

It’s all about balance and control, that is having lots of fruit and vegetables, lean meat and cereals with the occasional treat.

I like the traffic light labeling system as it provides a good summary of what we should be aiming for in regards to moderation. ‘Green’ foods are the healthiest choices with and should be a big part of our diet. ‘Amber’ foods are a less healthy choice that we need to consume in moderation, while ‘red’ foods are, not surprisingly, the most unhealthy food choices and we really need to minimise or reduce consumption of these.

When eating, and especially when you’re on a diet, choose foods that have moderate levels of calories, sugar, fat, saturated fat and salt but make sure you give yourself treats along the way, and enjoy!

A new study by the Peninsula College of Medicine in the UK has found that there are major benefits to training in the natural environment as opposed to training indoors, in particular in improved mental wellbeing.

The study also found there were physical benefits as the study participants experienced a greater sense of energy and fulfillment with a corresponding decrease in anger, depression and other negative mindsets. However, the study was short term and did not extend to whether people’s participation in outdoor exercise continued on an ongoing basis.

An interesting part of the study was the strong relationship between exercising outdoors and the physical and mental wellbeing of the participant.

With a large percentage of the population living in densely populated urban centers around the world, our connection to the natural environment is being slowly eroded.

Engaging in any form of outdoor activity re-establishes that connection of being at one with the natural environment. Even activities as simple as walking through a park, where you can observe the trees, plant life and contrasting theatre of changing colours, depending on the time of year, makes a difference.

Our modern lives have little respite from the stressful events that we experience on a daily basis from traffic jams, crowded public transport to spending eight hours a day staring at a computer screen in the office. Why not try setting aside some time today for some outdoor exercise and you may be surprised at how much better you feel.

While we focus on maintaining our physical health through exercise and nutrition, we sometimes forget to maintain our mental health.

According to a recent government report entitled “Australia’s health 2010“, 20% of Australians suffer from some form of mental disorder every year. More disturbing is that this statistic increases to 25% for those aged 16 to 24 years old.

Anxiety based disorders such as panic disorders, agoraphobia and social phobias account for 72% of this number, with affective disorders like depression and bi-polar accounting for 31%.

These numbers are based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics’s 2007 National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing (SMHWB). Even more alarming was the discovery that 7,286,600 Australians, or 45% of the population, will suffer from a mental disorder during their lifetime

So what can we do to improve our mental health?

1. Change your negative thoughts
We need to identify those negative notions swirling around our mind and replace them with positive thoughts.

2. Get a good nights sleep
Achieving 7 to 8 hours of quality sleep will go a long way to improving how you feel.

3. Healthy eating
A diet of fresh fruit, vegetables and less processed food will enrich your body with good nutrients.
This leads to improved alertness, increased energy and general wellbeing.

4. Maintaining quality relationships with friends and family.
As a society we are becoming more isolated from the world around us. Having good friends and family members to talk things through is very therapeutic. Spending quality time with those you care about can be as simple as catching up for coffee or going for a walk.

5. Keep exercising
Regular exercise helps reduce muscular tension and improve the flow of oxygen, chemicals and nutrients through the body.

For further information contact your local GP or Beyond Blue
www.beyondblue.org.au

Educating children about the benefits of healthy eating can start with showing kids how to grow their own fruit and vegetables.

What children learn from a young age can set the habits and behavior for later on in life as adults.

Ultimately parents need to take some responsibility for educating their children with healthy eating habits. This starts with an appreciation and understanding of the basics such as consuming plenty of fruit and vegetables on a daily basis.

An awesome initiative by Stephanie Alexander involves helping primary schools students growing their own vegetables in the schoolyard and harvesting their produce for cooking in the school’s kitchen.

This initiative spans 180 schools across Australia and involves children age from 8 to 12 years of age.

Today the Commonwealth government has contributed $12.8 million in supporting this invaluable program. These costs help offset any specialised staff and additional infrastructure that may be required in the food production process.

However the program only reaches a small minority of schools cross Australia, while the majority of the 6000 schools missing out.

Once again it comes down to budgetary constraints with very limited funding for a program that has the potential to have a positive effect on reducing Australia’s high proportion of people overweight and obese.

With an alarming 60% of Australians now overweight or obese with me to curtail this alarming statistic by starting by educating children.

It seems the government has the funds to squander $7.5 billion on Victoria’s appalling public transport system since it was privatised in 1999 or the $50 million per year that the Australian GrandPrix costs the Victorian taxpayer.

Surely such initiatives that affect the long-term health of our country deserve a higher allocation of funds.

While fruit and vegetables serve as the foundation for a child’s diet, many parents have experienced it can be a challenging task to get kids to eat their greens.

By giving children a greater understanding of how the fruit and vegetables are produced from a single seed/sapling, cultivation, harvesting and consuming what they produce, there is a greater probability of success as more sensors are associated with the process.

For children having the sense of touch with the plants, cultivating the smell of the garden, and the richness, tastes and smell one gets from freshly grown vegetables it helps children have lifelong associations with fruit and vegetables.

There are also other benefits that children learn responsibility as the plants must be tended to on a daily basis.

Ultimately it is about sending a positive messages about nutritious eating habits that will carry through to adulthood.