StarBodies with Hannah James
Kristin Cavallari eats a lowcarb diet of “proteins and vegetables,” she has said.
DITCH THE DOWNERS Got the winter blues? Maybe your daily habits are to blame. Take a look at these quick fixes.
DOUGHNUTS
5 TIPS TO
EAT FAT, GET SLIM After becoming a healthy-eating vegetarian, Christine Cronau got sick. Very sick—she was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. By changing her diet to banish sugar and wheat and include meat and fat, she found a blue-print for perfect health, detailed in her book Great Health is a Piece of Cake (Purple Lotus, $59.95; christinecronau.com).
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COFFEE
A morning cuppa is fine, but don’t drink tea or coffee after 4 PM—the caffeine will interfere with your sleep patterns and you’ll feel terrible the next day.
THE PILL
Women taking the pill are almost twice as likely to be depressed as those who don’t. No-one knows why, but if this is you, consider other contraception.
INTERNET
Teenagers who use the net excessively are two and a half times more likely to develop depression. Try working on your real-life relationships instead.
CIGARETTES Smoking increases the risk of depression by up to 93 per cent. Over time, nicotine switches off the brain’s mechanism for making feel-good dopamine.
PARTY ON!
COMMIT TO GET FIT!
Author Christine Cronau
Ever coveted J.Lo’s triathlete triceps or Katie Holmes’s marathon-running pins? Me too. Training for a specific goal is a great way to keep fit over winter—and announcing that goal to the world is a surefire way to make sure you stick to it. So here’s mine: I’ve signed up for the half-marathon at the Blackmores Sydney Running Festival in September. Yikes. Wish me luck!
COME TO THE ZUMBA PARTY
It can burn up to 4,200kJ an hour, and Shakira, Madonna, Natalie Portman and J.Lo are said to be fans. Zumba is the high-energy dance class that’s transformed many an exercise-phobic into an exercise-fanatic—and now it’s hitting nightclubs. No mirrors or grunting gym junkies, but lots of Latin music and party atmosphere? It’s a winner. See zumba.com/nightclubs.
CAVALLARI: SCOPE FEATURES; CHRISTINE CRONAU: JAMES PITMAN/PHOTO EVENTS. DITCH THE DOWNERS SOURCES: THE PILL: 2005 MONASH UNIVERSITY STUDY; INTERNET: 2010 SUNYAT-SEN UNIVERSITY, GUANGZHOU/ UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME, FREMANTLE STUDY; CIGARETTES: 2011 UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE STUDY
BAN SUGAR “Fructose is the damaging part of sugar—it’s one of the major causes of weight gain, and creates an acid imbalance in your body. This causes connective tissue breakdown, and all kinds of diseases. It’s also the major cause of Type II diabetes.” EAT FAT “All the natural fats like butter, coconut oil, even the fat on your meat, are healthy fats we’ve been eating for thousands of years. It’s physiologically impossible for fat to make you fat. It’s also the only food that creates a hormone in the body that tells you when you’re full— so when people remove fat from their diets, they often overeat.” CUT BACK CARBS “We are meant to eat carbs, but we eat way too many, and the only thing the body can do with them is convert them to fat. I don’t eat grains every day, but I might have wholegrains, like brown rice, two or three times a week. But listen to your body: if you’re tired, maybe you need more carbs.”
A fat and sugar fix won’t make you feel better for long. Dark chocolate (more than 85 per cent cocoa) is your best mood-booster, but try non-food treats, too.