- Claire Baseley • Registered Nutritionist
2nd January 2019
It’s January and as sure as night follows day or hangover follows NYE, everywhere you look there are detoxes. Detox diet plans, detox fasts, detox juices and detox supplements. What’s the juice on these plans and why would I never do one? Science or sales patter? The first thing about detox plans, whatever they are selling (and make no mistake, this is all about product sales and marketing with scant regard for any actual science), is that hardly any actually explain what a “toxin” is, let alone how their product will eliminate or ‘flush’ it from your body. If they do offer a scientific (or more accurately pseudo-scientific) explanation, it often differs from one brand to the next and few […]
9th October 2017
Anyone who knows or follows me on social media will know that I’m a strong proponent of resistance exercise for women (and men). The benefits are numerous, supporting the development of strength for specific sports or core muscles to help prevent injury, reducing age-related muscle loss, improving body and bone composition and reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes and later-life cognitive decline. For a fantastic and well referenced review of these benefits that is as relevant to the over 40s as it is for younger people, check out this blog (part 1 and part 2). Given the many and diverse benefits of resistance training, why are the few articles written in support of resistance exercise for women all about […]
17th August 2017
Lately, I’ve seen a fair few articles raising concerns over the amount of protein in our diets. In fact, I googled “Are we eating too much…” and the most popular predicted next words were “protein” and “meat”. Are we really eating too much protein? How much do we really need? Do some people need more? Does it really damage our kidneys and bones and give us cancer? Here’s the lowdown on all things protein-based. Quality AND quantity Protein is one of the three macronutrients (the other two being carbohydrate and fat). It’s made up of smaller units called amino acids, of which there are around 20, with 9 being essential in the diet as our body cannot make […]
4th August 2017
Diet trackers: friend or foe? After being asked to fill in a 24 hour food diary for a nutrition conference and discovering I was consuming a lot more (albeit healthy) fat than I thought, I decided to download the diet and exercise tracker My Fitness Pal to monitor my eating and training for a few days. While I found the process to be enlightening in some ways, I came across several pitfalls of My Fitness Pal in particular but also diet and fitness tracking in general. Trackers can help you identify areas in which you can improve your diet and lifestyle but as you’ll see in this article, they can be highly misleading and may not be good for […]