Step 1
1. Start your day off right with yummy vitamins and iron.
Getting those vitamins can be done in a variety of ways the
best way is to chow down on a bowl of your favorite cereal.
Make sure to remember that the cereal is not high in sugar or chocolate.
The grains in it are good for your digestive system.
Other ways to do it include eating a chocolaty drink of
something filled with vitamins such as Spirulina or Slim Fast.
To get your iron needs for the day green leafy vegetables like spinach
with strawberries should work.
According to the USDA National Nutrient Database, one cup of cooked spinach
provides ~3.5mg of iron whereas a cup of raw spinach only contains 1 mg of iron.
The recommended iron intake for men and post-menopausal women is 8 mg.
The recommended intake for pre-menopausal women is 18 mg and the
recommendation increases to 27 mg for pregnant women.
Spinach also contains oxalic acid (sometimes referred as oxalate).
Oxalic acid binds with iron, hence inhibiting its absorption.
Spinach is not the only food containing high levels of oxalic acid.
Whole grains such as buckwheat and amaranth, other vegetables such as chard
and rhubarb, as well as beans and nuts all contain significant levels of oxalic acid.
Iron Absorption Enhancers:
* Meat, fish, or poultry
* Fruits: Orange, Orange Juice, cantaloupe, strawberries, grapefruit and other Vitamin-C rich fruits
* Vegetables: Broccoli, brussels sprouts, tomato, tomato juice, potato, green & red peppers
* White wine
Potentially a multivitamin and an iron pill will do, but only if you're in a hurry.
Step 2
2. Eating lots of nutritious fruits and vegetables not only contain lots of yummy unprocessed sugar,
but it also contains lots of healthy antioxidants and it is high in fiber which is
good for your digestive system as well.
Having a diet too high in processed sugar makes you urinate more since sugar is electron withdrawing,
non-processed sugar takes longer to digest.
Also a diet that contains a lot of processed sugar causes a lot of a free radicals
(unpaired electrons) to be produced unnecessarily which damages the body.
A diet that has a lot of meat in it can cause more free radicals to be produced
as a result of the Fenton reaction: (1) Fe2+ + H2O2 ? Fe3+ + OH· + OH?, and
(2) Fe3+ + H2O2 ? Fe2+ + OOH· + H+ as it says in wikipedia: "The mismanagement of iron
in cellular systems can lead to the toxic accumulation of iron in organ systems such as the liver
and brain. It is believed that this build up of iron eventually leads to the production
of free radicals leading to oxidative stress, cellular damage and eventual cellular death
via apoptotic signaling."
Step 3
3. To prevent the buildup of free radicals which can be destructive to the proteins, which
are the machines of the cell it is important to eat a diet rich in high concentrations of antioxidants
foods that contain high levels of antioxidants (since antioxidants protect the proteins which protect us)
tend to be red skinned juicy fruits (the berries tend to have higher levels of antioxidants) such as
red cranberries, blueberries, especially red grapes which has resveratrol which can easily get through the
cell membrane due to its small size, red cherries, and red strawberries. There are
many more like red beets, olives, and soybeans... .
You may have noticed that in the preceding paragraph I mentioned blueberries, but they are not red.
Well, actually blueberries would be red cranberries except that their pH is off, blue berries are related
to cranberries except that their pH is different. Actually all the antioxidants tend to be acidic
since their functional unit is a -OH and when put together with a base some simple chemistry occurs
base + acid => salt + water. This causes a neutralization of the beneficial effects in the antioxidants.
The best way to circumvent this while eating is to avoid eating the antioxidants with anything that might
contain milk (cheese, yogurt, icecream, and anything else that you can think of like this) since milk is
basic.
Additionally heating up something like the proteins in hair causes a process of denaturing to occur,
and you get curls or straight hair. Likewise heating up the foods that contain antioxidants
causes those molecules to fall apart and the antioxidants lose their beneficial effect,
so to avoid this it is best to have your fruits in their natural forms.
Also it is probably a good idea to start having tea as iced tea
Additional things that can cause production of too many free radicals are ultraviolet waves found in
natural sunlight, high levels of radiation, and smoking (which is better avoided).
In environments such as these it is best to use common sense to reduce levels of things
that can cause free radicals like wearing suntan lotion or long sleeves for long periods
outside during the day, and a lead apron in the presence of high levels of radiation.
Of course minimizing your time in the precense of these things will also help, and also keeping
your distance from these sources of free radical producing agents will also help.
Step 4
4. A simple rule of thumb to determine how many calories you should eat in one day
is to determine how much you want to weigh in pounds and then multiply that number by ten to get
the number of calories you should be eating every day.
To calculate number of calories burned while excercising click here.