The Optimise Health Blog

 Here in the UK many still practise the Christian tradition of Lent: the discipline of giving something up to consider living simply, frequently a food item and for health benefit. The idea is to mimic the 40 day fast undertaken by Jesus in the wilderness, when he was tested by the devil and tempted to prove he was ready to start his mission. In England we start by making pancakes on Shrove Tuesday - to use up the sweet stuff in the larder so we are not tempted to eat it again for the duration of lent and to fuel the fast. Today the focus may be more about the challenge of reining in appetite or curbing bad habits like smoking or eating treats to excess and less about Christs' 40 days and nights in the desert being stalked by satan. Interestingly most ancient traditions held in them the concept of feasts: I.E. celebrating a particular event or time of year with a party and food. This meant eating special luxuries or taking pleasure in rarer foods or harvest time...

You are a typical guy. You eat mainly meat and carbs and sometimes a few veg on the side. You eat cheese in a burger or sandwich and eggs in a fry up. You grab the odd piece of fruit and think you can get 5 a day from drinking a whole carton of orange juice.. So you like the idea of this BEATTHEBELLY thing and you're on a fitness drive so you start looking into diets: there is a bewildering variety of options out there from the Acai berry supplement diet with bowel cleanser (a.k.a caffeine fuelled vitamin C boost bowel explosion diet) to the Atkins "just eat meat and cheese" and get a neck like a bull diet. Diet is something we all have to intake every day of our life, so essentially we are all on a diet all the time , but sometimes we tighten up and focus on certain foods. How do you make sure you're getting a balanced diet? Lets focus on a typical Western or developed world diet. You need Protein to build muscles - from meat, fish, eggs, cheese...