Lost: 2 lb
Total weight loss since day 1: 1 stone 8 lb
Just think how much weight I could've lost so far this month if I had stayed totally raw...my weight has been going up and down like a yo-yo this week!
After my fast yesterday I woke up feeling full of energy, so I went off to the gym and had a fantastic workout. After I got back home I made myself a green smoothie of banana, mango and chard. That took me through to dinnertime where I made a very yummy salad, containing lettuce, chopped tomatoes and I did a mixture in a separate bowl of grated carrot, raisins, pineapple and cucumber. I then made up a mango dressing to pour all over it...then mixed it in with the rest of the salad, which made for an extremely luscious, tasty and tropical meal.
I want to talk about vitamin B12...
Did you know that vitamin B12 deficiency is not limited to vegetarians and vegans...it is common among meat-eaters as well? Not because they don't consume enough B12, but because they don't properly produce and absorb it.
First,vitamin B12 is a waste product of a bacteria that can be found in and on the foods we eat (of both animal and plant origin). Second, B12 is also produced in the intestine and the mucosa of healthy humans.
Plants do not make a lot of vitamins, rather they soak them up from the soil through their roots. Most of our vitamins are made by bacteria in the soil. Since the use of pesticides and fertilisers, farmers have inadvertently sterilized the bacteria out of our soil.
It is easy to understand why nutritional researchers generally encounter no vitamin B12 in plant food, since they take their samples from among products grown in dead soil.
However, organically-grown plants specifically cultivated in highly composted soils rich with organic matter, can contain plenty of B12 and a host of other nutrients not found (or found in short supply) in industrially-grown produce.
Vitamin B12 deficiency is usually only a problem if you lack a chemical called the "intrinsic factor", which causes people to be unable to absorb B12. It seems that intrinsic factor production is reduced as dietary fat increases. This is by far the most common cause of B12 deficiency.
Doctors can easily test whether a person has a normal ability to absorb B12. Thus, all of us, vegetarians and meat-eaters alike are at risk of vitamin B12 deficiency.
My source of information comes from Dr. Douglas N. Graham, author of The 80/10/10 diet.
So as I see it, it's best to be on a low-fat diet eating organically grown fruit and vegetables to give your body the best chance of assimilating vitamin B12. I hope this has helped shed a bit more light on the complexity of vitamin B12.
So tomorrow, picking up my organic veg in the morning, and taking my parents and partner out for lunch at La Plaza in Malaga. Lots of pictures to follow.
On a more lighter note, my cat, Paz, has found a new way of sleeping on the back of my couch...bless him, the little sod!
If only he would clean up all of the white hairs that he leaves behind on the cushions!
No comments:
Post a Comment