Why one-day rice diet?

Hi everyone, I'm back from my little holiday in sunny Latvia! 31 degrees and wall-to-wall sunshine. I'm told the weather was the same here while I'm away, but I have my doubts :)
 

Spending a few days at home with my mother's good food – all my old favourites: smoked chicken, Jubilee sausages, layered fish dishes and cheese salads prepared in my mother's very special style, I came back, I believe, with at least one or two kilos more than when I left here. In fact – I couldn't close my jeans on the way back home so I even bought some lovely new trousers with an elastic waist for comfort.

I arrived in Belfast, put on my elastic waist trousers the next morning and

decided that now was the time to act if I wanted to get back into my normal clothes again.

Thankfully, I knew exactly what was going inside my body and how to help get it back on track.

The thing is that it's so easy to gain some 1-2 kilos after particular feasts – like birthdays, Christmas celebrations lasting 3-4 days, my own holidays enjoying lots of meals made by mother, or any other lovely food overindulgences. In these situations, it is the water that has accumulated in the body during the festive times which creates those additional kilos.

Why has the water accumulated? Mostly, it's because the foods we eat during such over-indulences are packed with salt. Meats, some fish, chips, gravies, cheese, you name it. And where salt goes, water follows.

So to get rid of those couple of kilos, we simply need to get rid of the extra

water. How? There are many ways but my favourite is the short one-day rice diet. (This method is suitable for dealing with sudden weight fluctuations rather than long term weight issues.)

What is the rice diet about?

First, rice is very low in calories and, second, it contains good amounts of potassium which is like an anti-dote to sodium. The more potassium, the less sodium. Extra sodium gets excreted and when the sodium leaves the body, so does the water.

The procedure of the rice diet:

• Wash a glass of rice thoroughly to rinse off all the starch surrounding them. The water should be visibly clear. (The reason for doing this is that starch acts like white sugar – it creates an insulin surge and more appetite as a result.)

• Boil your rice (no salt) to 'al dente' condition. 
   
• Divide the rice into four or five portions
  
  
• eat only the rice during this one day and drink plenty of water to help wash away any extra salts
  
  
• Don't put salt into anything for that one day.

One day can be enough for you to wake up the next morning back to your normal self. Or maybe feeling even better.

But, if you're brave, you can make a two or three day salt-free, potassium-rich

rice diet, by including vegetables and fruits with high potassium content: bananas, avocados, green leafy vegetables. But my favourite method is still one single day of 'suffering'.

People who have some sugar fluctuations may find this diet quite stressful but adding a bit of a good lean unsalted protein – like boiled lean meat - can help address the sugar imbalances.

So try it – maybe just for fun to see how you feel after such a one-day extravaganza. As for me, I'm just feeling really happy to report that I've managed to fit back into my favourite jeans without any problem:)