Staying in shape

Maintaining the right weight and a slim body shape is essential in living a long, healthy life. Overweight, different forms of visceral fat, cellulite, and fluid retention are just some of the many conditions resulting from life habits and facilitated by a sedentary lifestyle, exposure to chronic stress conditions, and poor diets with a caloric surplus of antinutrients such as refined sugars, animal fat and alcohol, combined with a deficit of vital substances.

General measures

In addition to a personalised nutritional approach, a number of simple measures can help us get back into shape such as reducing our toxic load to a minimum (drugs, smoking, excess alcohol and coffee, food additives, environmental pollutants), reducing simple carbohydrates in favour of complex ones, favouring whole grains, limiting saturated fats (cheeses, fatty meats), eating fruit and vegetables frequently throughout the day, exercising regularly and getting enough sunlight.

Weight-control nutritional supplements

Among the medicinal plants and nutritional supplements that can help get us back into shape, there are 3 surprising ‘weight-control aids’ obtained from apple, pineapple, and dandelion extracts.

Apple

The apple (Malus domestica Borkh.) is a fruit with well-balanced nutritional characteristics, which has forever been highly valued: it’s tasty, easy to eat, satisfying, and low in calories. Apple pulp is made up of pectins which absorb toxic waste in the intestine, inhibiting the harmful growth of bacteria and protecting the blood vessels from dangerous cholesterol deposits. The dry extract obtained from apple peel helps to modulate the absorption of nutrients, thus reducing the assimilation of sugars and cholesterol. Hence it is used to help control body weight.

Pineapple

This large tropical herbaceous plant (Ananas comosus (L.) Merr) is valued for its fruit, rich in proteolytic enzymes known as bromelain, which favour the digestive process and promote the reabsorption of localised swelling due to the accumulation of waste, lymphatic stasis, and localised inflammation. Pineapple-based preparations associated with plants with a diuretic action such as orthosiphon, and with a tissue draining action such as mate, are ideal in the case of cellulite and visceral fat.

Dandelion

Taraxacum (Taraxacum officinale Weber), also known as dandelion or blowball, is one of the best known and most commonly used herbs in popular culture. Its distinctly positive dietary and phytotherapeutic power is owing to the content of complex sugars, calcium, iron, potassium, manganese, and vitamins A and C. In phytotherapy, it is valued for its purifying action, in particular in treating spring ailments, and as a valuable weight-control aid.