It’s can be somewhat easy to let your diet go off track during the spring season. If you have children, they are on spring break. Or maybe you’re just ready for a week off or work to celebrate the warmer weather. Whatever the case may be, you’re likely heading to a warm locale to enjoy some waves, sand and sun.
And as we all know – travel can present quite a challenge when it comes to keeping your diet healthy and light. But with a little dedication and planning, there’s no reason you need to succumb to the dreaded travel weight gain.
Here are some ways to stay on track, even when you’re on the road (or at the beach).
Drink plenty of water. It’s easy to mistake thirst for hunger, so stay hydrated and avoid this problem altogether.
Take healthy snacks along with you. Stock your hotel room with bottled water, fresh fruit, healthy granola bars or whatever snacks you enjoy, as long as they’re healthy and fast.
Remember to eat breakfast. It’s easy to forget in the hustle and bustle of packing, but skipping breakfast only sets you up for overeating later in the day (because you’ll naturally be starving).
If you’re not going to be somewhere fresh, healthy food is likely to be available, take your own! There’s no reason to give in to greasy fast food with products like our Go Healthy Travel Pack available. These covered, microwave-friendly, easy-to-clean plates make it a snap to plan perfectly portioned meals of veggies and fruits, lean proteins, whole grains, and more.
Above all, remember that even when you’re travelling, the only reason you should ever eat is because you’re hungry. It’s okay to have a treat now and then (in fact, you should, so that you don’t feel deprived), but don’t overdo it.
Be mindful of what you’re eating (and why you’re eating), and find ways other than food to celebrate your vacation with your loved ones!
If an African Grey parrot eats avocado and is not treated immediately, it will die. The bird’s system was not made for it.
So too, if you put something in your mouth that’s poisonous, will you die.
Take Atropa Belladonna. It’s a lovely looking black cherry-resembling plant, but eating the berry is like playing Russian roulette. Although the berry looks harmless, there’s a strong possibility you will die.
Food can kill. And it can heal.
You can also solve your biggest problems with food.
Some of the most stressful problems we face in our day-to-day lives are:
Relational
Lack of money
Poor health
Here’s how you can use food to help solve these three issues:
Relational problems
At one stage, my son’s fiancé was a lunatic.
The food you eat can make you crazy, kill you or heal you
Usually a sweet girl, she became horribly jealous and overbearing. Every time another female even glanced at her fiancé, she would throw a fit that would last for hours.
You can imagine the toll it took on their relationship. As much as I adored her, things became so bad that I told him he would need to think about leaving her.
And then we discovered the root cause of her behavior stemmed from the Petogen birth control injectionshe was on. Once the effects of it had worn off, she became sweet once again and the green monster was laid to rest.
Anything ingested is going to have an effect. Elaine Magee, MPH, RD, says,
“Basically the science of food’s affect on mood is based on this: Dietary changes can bring about changes in our brain structure (chemically and physiologically), which can lead to altered behavior.”
While food may not perfect your relationships, it may have a major impact on them.
Why? The endocrine system is your body’s Big Honcho and coordinates the chemicals that your body produces to control most functions including mood and sexual functions (and your libido). The endocrine system is greatly affected by the food you eat.
Naturally, mood affects the quality of your relationships, and your libido determines the quality of intimacy between you and your partner.
Food impacts cognitive functions which of course play a major part in relationships:
Your reasoning ability
Memory
Attention and focus
Your intelligence
Here’s food (uh hum) for thought: contrary to popular belief, it is not natural that adolescents have pimply faces, or that they’re as moody as they’re known to be. The process-laden food they’re consuming harms their endocrine systems which result in moodiness, pimply faces and oftentimes difficult behavior.
Food may certainly solve many relational issues.
Lack of money
Fearing what you’re going to feed your family on a tiny budget is another big problem for many people.
But if you were to cut out all the unnecessary and nutrient-depleted foods we tend to favor, you can save quite a bit and get healthier at the same time. How to eat healthy on a tight budget? Aim to eat like this every day:
You can eat natural and healthy food even if you’re on a tight budget
40% Fresh fruit – approximate cost of $1 per adult per day
40% Fresh veggies – approximate cost of $3 per adult per day
10% Raw nuts and seeds – approximate cost of $1 per adult per day
5% Wholegrains/potatoes – approximate cost of $.50 per adult per day
5% Herbs – approximate cost of $.20 per adult per day
If you follow this simple formula, you should spend about $5.70 per adult per day. That’s half the amount of what the average person eats a day.
“Today, more than 95% of all chronic disease is caused by food choice, toxic food ingredients, nutritional deficiencies and lack of physical exercise.” – Mike Adams
To qualify, your doctor did not study the effects of food on the body. Shocking, isn’t it?
Doctors have their place. But we can no longer rely on them to ensure our continued health. Because before they will prescribe food as medicine, they will prescribe a drug. This is what they qualify for – drug prescription, not your ongoing, optimal health.
What you eat can cause disease and can heal it. Many cancer patients have opted for the natural route instead of chemotherapy, and been healed. In fact, the body can repair itself and reverse disease if only you stop what you have been doing and make lifestyle changes, a big part of which is changing what you eat.
The video below is of Dr. Dean Ornish and he explains how you heal your body with food.
You can solve most, if not all, your health problems with food.
Almost 70% of adults are overweight. It’s a known fact the majority of women in this percentage also attempt diet plans. And when the diet fails, they are left feeling a tremendous amount of guilt and shame.
I know.
I have been overweight just about my whole life. And it’s affected me profoundly.
Each time I tried a diet plan and failed, I was left feeling worthless. I understand the desperation of the overweight woman.
So do some very clever entrepreneurs. And pharmaceuticals.
In 2013, weight loss companies made $2.4 billion in sales. Weight loss supplements raked in sales of $14 billion. Thousands of bariatric surgeries are performed each year. The desperation of the majority of the population to lose weight makes for a very profitable industry. According to the National Health Service, four of the most popular diet plans are:
5:2 diet
Cambridge diet
Dukan diet
Paleo diet
From a health and psychological point of view, I’m going to shoot them all down with why they will fail you.
Based on intermittent fasting, you eat normally for 5 days a week, and fast 2 days a week.
This is one diet that excited me when I first heard about it because it’s such a unique and radical concept.
And it works from a health point of view.
I still think the concept is pretty awesome. In an ideal world, I would encourage everyone to try it.
But don’t think you can eat whatever you want in the 5 days of freedom; you still need to watch how much you eat, and the types of foods you consume.
For most of us with food issues, it may aggravate the way you relate to food. In other words, if you have suffered with food addiction or overeating, the 5:2 diet may just make things worse from a psychological point of view.
I didn’t have to do much research before concluding that the Cambridge diet is a money spinner.
When any diet involves the purchasing of meal replacements, it’s about the money.
I can guarantee that the majority of dieters who try this diet will fail in the long-term.
I also didn’t have to look far to find that one of the ingredients in the shakes (there are a lot of products you can buy on this diet) contains aspartame. Aspartame wreaks havoc with your endocrine system, and can cause all sorts of health problems, including weight gain. And I haven’t even delved into any of the other ingredients…
You need a vitamin supplement when you go on the Dukan diet, which says a whole lot about the overall nutritional value of the foods you’re allowed to eat.
In the initial phases, the diet lacks variety so you may get bored easily and stop. In the beginning, it’s also a low carb, fat restrictive, high protein diet.
Your body needs carbohydrates and it depends on good fats which it can’t make on it’s own.
Whether meat is lean or full fat, it’s been found to be addictive, and is carcinogenic when heated above a certain temperature. Encouraging people to choose it over carbohydrates is just plain wrong. If you need to lose weight fast and you’re prepared to follow this diet for a week or two, all good and well.
But in the long-term it is a bad diet and devastating to the continued health of your body.
A low carb, high protein diet which eliminates processed and refined foods. It’s impossible to follow the diet without eating meat.
The Paleo diet is based on an educated guess as to what our forefathers ate. That is a great concept and one we should all attempt to follow. But…I doubt our ancestors ate quite as much meat as this diet advocates. Even in Biblical times, people would generally reserve meat for the special occasion and certainly didn’t eat it daily.
When you first start the Paleo diet, you may see great results, including weight loss and increased energy. This is due to restricting processed and refined foods, which is naturally going to give your body a great boost.
But after limiting carbs and eating so much meat, some of your organs are going to start taking strain. Even Tim Noakes got Diabetes after he started the diet…and that should tell us something. You can get more information on banting from South African natural health guru Mary-Ann Shearer.
The most popular diet plans are not going to give you lasting weight loss or health. It is the standard American diet that’s the problem and dieting will not fix it.
In summary
Weight gain is merely a symptom of something gone wrong in the body – whether that be physically, emotionally or spiritually. If you want to lose weight, stop having a diet mentality and start putting your body’s health first. Natural – and permanent – weight loss will follow. Unlike so many of these diet plans, it’s that simple.
Over the years, there have been many so-called nutrition experts advising us how to lose weight. Think Tim Noakes. Robert Atkins. Pierre Dukan. And like lambs to the slaughter, we have blindly followed their sometimes very self-serving sermons. And then paid the price. It’s hard to cut through the crap. Especially when we’ve been groomed to obey the medical fraternity without question. But we only have to look to the world’s healthiest people, and those who live the longest with the least amount of health issues, to discover the truth about how we really should be eating and living.
Where are the world’s healthiest people?
Dan Buettner learned that the healthiest – and longest living people in the world – live in:
Okinawa in Japan
Sardinia in Italy
Nicoya in Costa Rica
Icaria in Greece
The Seventh-day Adventists in Loma Linda, California
Marge Jetton, who died at the age of 106, was a Seventh-day Adventist who lived in Loma Linda, California. It’s interesting to note that the Seventh-day Adventists in California live on average 5 – 8 years longer than other Californians. Now I bet you’re thinking that living longer is all very well and good, but so what right? Who wants to live longer than eighty anyway? The thing is, these people – in fact, all the people in what’s been termed the “Blue Zones” – not only live longer, but their quality of life is so much better than elsewhere in the world, so that they live with vibrancy. Take Marge as an example. Just before her death, she was still walking a mile every day, lifting weights and stayed busy volunteering in her community. Her life remained rich and healthy until the end.
How to live longer, happier and healthier
So what’s different about the healthiest people in the world? What are they doing that the rest of us should copy if we want longevity and vibrant health until death we do part? It’s not about that one superfood that us westernized people put our hopes on to cure all our health woes and make us lose weight. They don’t take the pills our doctors recommend to make their bones strong. They don’t put their faith in one herb or one fruit or one vegetable. And they don’t shop at the mass stores the rest of the world favors. Stores that stock mass produced genetically modified, pesticide sprayed crops preserved as food and packaged conveniently in tins and boxes. For the people in the Blue Zones, their longevity and health can be attributed not to one thing, but rather to a combination of:
Exercise (their lifestyles are naturally more active than ours).
Diets that are completely natural (95% of their diets are plant-based and only a scant 5% is meat).
Getting lots of rest.
Having plenty of sex.
Drinking natural preservative-free wine.
Caring about their communities and family-oriented.
Belief in a higher power.
They are far less stressed than the rest of the world.
How you can copy the healthiest people in the world
Exercise more. You don’t have to go to gym, but you do need to move regularly, and also do some type of weight bearing exercises which helps make your bones strong.
Eat more plant based, natural whole foods.
Seriously limit the amount of meat you eat, including chicken and fish. Many of the Blue Zone people eat a completely vegetarian diet, with meat only on special occasions.
Limit your dairy intake.
Enjoy sex with your spouse. Do it often and wholeheartedly.
Believe in God. Marge Jetton emphasized this as one of the reasons she lived so long and stayed so healthy.
Care about your family and community. Volunteer your help where needed.
Limit your stressors. Learn how to handle what stresses you, or change your circumstances.
Conclusion
Vibrant health is simple and affordable. Contrary to what we are being brainwashed into, longevity does not come in a pill. When a so-called nutritional expert tries to complicate health, you have to ask yourself why, and what they stand to benefit from their advice. Most importantly, if you’re tempted to be taken in by the empty promises of a nutritional guru or professor or doctor, always do your homework first. Look for the answers from the people who actually live longer and stay healthier and you won’t go wrong.
After all, it’s healthier than other takeaways because its Chinese food and Chinese people are healthier and slimmer than the rest of the world.
Boing! Wrong!
Contrary to popular belief, the Asian diet us naïve westerners consider a healthier fast food option doesn’t even remotely resemble any of the food the long living people of rural China eat.
In fact, Chinese food may be one of the worst fast food options in terms of health and weight loss. And it’s the most popular fast-food choice in America.
We somehow think that the Asian diet is the same wherever it is served. But as Safefood puts it:
“Traditional Asian diets are low in fat and high in fruit, vegetables and fibre. However, these traditional meals have been adapted to suit Western palates and, in doing so, different ingredients in different quantities are added, possibly increasing their fat and salt content.”
One adjustment to this statement. But before we go there, have you ever noticed that the more Chinese fast-food you eat, the more you want? I suppose the same can be said of any fast-food, but for me personally, every time I ate Chinese takeaways, I could never figure out why it never satisfied and left me feeling hungrier than when I began.
Well, I finally figured it out. It’s because the Chinese food we eat in America consists of an increased amount of sugar, fat and salt while the taste is enhanced by MSG. It is this which spins your taste buds out of control.
The healthy Asian diet version
In the most comprehensive nutritional study ever conducted, it was found that the typical Asian diet contained 30% more calories than the typical American diet.
What’s noteworthy about that, is that while China has no obesity problem, America does.
The reason why China’s people get away with eating more calories is the type of food they eat, and the amount of exercise the rural population gets in their everyday lives.
The traditional Asian diet is completely unlike the Chinese takeaways we drool over.
Chinese Holistic Health Exercises reports that unlike Choo Chong’s takeaways around the corner, the real Asian diet is bland, and consists of:
Veggies
Fruits
Rice
Noodles (not the mass produced variety we know)
A limited amount of meat
No copious amounts of oil is used for frying. No sugar. No dairy. Just a little garlic, ginger and chili.
Hm. Wonder who’s up for Chinese food now?
What gets added to Choo Chong’s Takeaways to make it all more palatable for our spoilt westernized taste buds is at the root cause of the problem.
Bad stuff that gets added to Chinese takeaways
BHA
BHA’s one use is as a food preservative to reduce how fast fats become rancid. Studies indicate that it may damage the body’s circulatory system.
BHA has been cancer-forming in rats, hamsters and mice.
MSG
MSG is used to boost the meaty, savory flavor of food and is common in the use of Korean, Japanese and Chinese food takeaways.
MSG is cheap and loved by the food industry who uses it to mask poor quality food and is the culprit for overeating.
The trick of MSG is that when it lands on your tongue, you are tricked into thinking that the food tastes better than it does. Clever.
Not only does it deceive your taste buds, it also whips your cells into a frenzy because it’s an excitotoxin.
Cancer-forming oils
All cheap oils you buy in supermarkets are extremely bad for your health, because of the high temperatures they’ve endured which change their
It’s a better option to eat your chopsticks instead of westernized Chinese food
chemical structure. Even quality oils – with the exception of coconut oil and palm fruit oil – become carcinogenic when heated above a certain temperature.
No takeaway establishment is going to care enough about your health to use the right kind of oil to prepare your fast-food order. Except it they tout themselves as a health spot.
High fructose corn syrup
Most sauces used in Chinese food contain high fructose corn syrup. Both sugar and high fructose corn syrup can result in the top killer diseases as well as increased appetite and weight gain.
In summary
The Chinese food we know does not mirror the healthy traditional Asian diet which keeps its people healthy and strong, even up to old age. Now that you know the truth, choose an apple instead of Choo Chong’s Takeaways down the road.
I am ashamed to admit that when I first started my foray into losing weight without dieting, I did not know the feeling of hunger.
It’s shocking, but true.
I kept myself from ever feeling hungry. The next meal would hit my innards before my stomach even had a chance to growl.
How sad, because there is something deliciously sweet and satisfying about quenching grumbling hunger pangs. I only know that now, years and years after I first developed an overeating problem.
Closely related to hunger pangs and growling stomachs is how much we should be eating, and although I mastered the hunger experience, I have not successfully managed to conquer my portion distortions. Sigh.
Food portions then and now
It’s clear that most Americans have no idea how much they should be eating because the portions of food we ingest are way out of control.
And the fast-food trend of super sizing will probably only get worse as we get used to eating more and more, catering to our taste buds which never seem to stop craving.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, normal women (women who do not have food issues like overeaters, bulimics or anorexics) are eating 300 calories more every day than 20 years ago. For comparison’ sakes, 300 calories equals 4 slices of white bread.
To put it into perspective, a mere 100 extra calories a day equals a steady weight gain of 10 pounds a year.
Why are we overeating?
Dr. David Spiegel, Professor at Stanford University, says that we overeat because our diets consist mostly of highly processed, nutrient depleted food which leaves us unsatisfied.
We incorrectly interpret the incessant call for more as hunger, when it’s really our bodies begging for the nutrients it needs from whole foods. The human digestive system still works the same as it did for our ancestors thousands of years ago, but our lifestyles and diet has changed considerably. It is this which has caused a tremendous amount of health issues and a dramatic increase in obesity.
Do portion control tools work?
This is what 1800 calories a day looks like
A sedentary woman should only be eating 1800 calories a day, and a sedentary man 2200 calories a day. Anything more than that and in time, you can kiss your slim figure goodbye.
While calorie restriction certainly may be the answer to weight loss, it’s clear that dieting does not work.
From personal experience, I know that diets don’t work because there is more at play to being overweight than what goes into your mouth.
The biggest element of overeating and food addiction is the psychological aspect.
If you eat too much, and you dread giving up certain foods or decreasing the amounts you consume, you need to do a little self-analysis about why, i.e.
What empty spots is food fulfilling for you?
Why are you dependent on food?
Once you know the reason to that, you can start working on solutions.Be warned that every solution is likely to involve pain of some type because any habit – and especially food habits – are downright hard to stop. In fact, junk food addiction is tougher to break than cocaine addiction.
But there are things you can do to help make the habit-breaking easier, and using portion control plates is one of them.
Backing up a moment: one of the most powerful experiments I participated in when I first began learning how to identify real hunger, was to eat blindfolded until I felt satisfied. When the blindfold was removed, I was amazed at how much food I still had left on my plate – and trust me, leaving food on my plate was not the norm for me.
Portion control plates work in a similar psychological manner. Statistics prove that portion control plates work for weight loss. When a study was conducted by the US National Institutes of Health, the people who were served food on a large plate consumed 45% more than their counterparts who were served food from controlled portion plates.
In another study with Diabetes participants, it was observed that patients using portion control plates lost an average of 1.8% of weight while those that didn’t lost only 0.1% of weight.
To summarize: there is no magic wand to weight loss. And any method you choose is going to involve commitment on your part. But it is important to make the journey a fun one, and to use tools that help make it easier. One such way is with Precise Portions range of portion control products. Hey, they are pretty and fun to use. And will help you eat almost 50% less than you currently do, and eat more nutrient dense foods too.
Why food addiction is tougher to break than cocaine addiction
Let’s be real. No-one overeats lettuce leaves and spinach.
This should make us wonder why…
But it doesn’t. Because most people are not in the habit of chowing down on lettuce leaves and spinach.
I reckon most people are way too dependent on food, even those not looking to lose weight. In fact, in a poll of Hubpages readers, 85% of people felt they eat more than they need to.
It’s a sign of the times. I imagine it’s only going to get worse. Just look at the obesity problem and trend in America.
Money is the driving force behind most of the food available in shops. I don’t think most people realize that they may be putting their lives in danger when they eat food that has come from a factory.
Why?
Because of what often gets added to the food to either make it keep, or to make it taste better. And sometimes, to intentionally hook you.
It’s been proven that foods high in fat, salt and sugar change the brain’s chemistry to compel people to eat too much. Up to this point, we have been too concerned about what goes on in our body when we eat, and not enough attention has been given to how the brain responds to certain foods, or the combination of certain foods.
To your detriment, fast food suppliers and food manufacturers have cunningly cottoned on and use this knowledge for your destruction. They groom you to become addicted to their food so that they can keep you coming back for more.
Ingredients in food that cause overeating and food addiction
David A. Kessler, Harvard-trained doctor, medical school dean and former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, conducted some research for the book, “The End of Overeating” by Eric Risberg.
Where some fast food restaurants had declined to provide ingredients to the FDA, he took to the same fast food dumpsters to check out the ingredients of what was really in the food they sold. According to Washington Post, this is what he found:
The labels showed the foods were bathed in salt, fat and sugars, beyond what a diner might expect by reading the menu, Kessler said. The ingredient list for Southwestern Eggrolls mentioned salt eight different times; sugars showed up five times. The “egg rolls,” which are deep-fried in fat, contain chicken that has been chopped up like meatloaf to give it a “melt in the mouth” quality that also makes it faster to eat. By the time a diner has finished this appetizer, she has consumed 910 calories, 57 grams of fat and 1,960 milligrams of sodium.
Instead of satisfying hunger, the salt-fat-sugar combination will stimulate that diner’s brain to crave more, Kessler said. For many, the come-on offered by Lay’s Potato Chips — “Betcha can’t eat just one” — is scientifically accurate. And the food industry manipulates this neurological response, designing foods to induce people to eat more than they should or even want, Kessler found.
The fat-sugar-salt combination of some foods is highly addictive
But…it’s not only the salt-fat-sugar combination that gets our tongues craving more. There are other ingredients that do it too. These are:
MSG – used often in Asian fast foods, this is the reason you just can’t stop eating after eating Chinese takeaways.
Cheese – why do you think most fast food burgers come with a dose of cheese and why pizza is so popular?
Meat – The blood in meat contains chemicals that activate the opioid system which controls pain, reward and addictive behaviors.
How food addiction works
Your brain has a reward system which was designed for your survival.
Imagine if food was not pleasurable…we would not eat it, and then we would die.
The brain was created to reward you for doing something right, like eating. So the brain gives you pleasure when you eat.
Eating an apple or a cheese sandwich may cause some release of dopamine, but chowing down on a burger and chips is so incredibly rewarding that it releases too much.
What can you do to break a food addiction habit?
Food needs to be pleasurable so that we will continue eating to live. The reason why food addiction is tougher to break than cocaine addiction is because for obvious reasons, we can’t ever give up food and live. But we can give up cocaine and live.
If you suffer from food addiction, you know how hard it is to give up those foods that give you pleasure, and even more so, the foods that give your brain the cue to eat. In other words, your bad eating habits. For me, that has always been eating chips or popcorn when watching a movie, so when I sit down to watch a movie, I immediately feel like chips even though I may have just had supper. If I were to obey the cue and eat the chips, I am reinforcing the habit and this strengthens the neural circuits which strengthen my bad food addiction habit.
This video with Kessler explains more on food cues and addiction:
To break a food addiction habit, speaking from my own experience, you need to change your habits. And this always involves pain. It takes a conscious decision to just stop. But you need to do it one step at a time, not all at once because that would just be too much.
If you need to, go so far as to book into a health spa for 3 weeks where they control what you eat, and decide that when your stay is over, you will not touch the addictive food again.
If not a health spa, make it a project, that by such and such a day, you are going to give up such and such addictive food. And then just go for it. Ignore the pain of withdrawal and press on forwards. It does get easier. I am testament of this. I have not fully conquered my own food addictions, but I’ve successfully let go of dairy, sugar, MSG and meat.
Diets that work? Humph. Every single diet I ever tried just ended in castigating myself because of my failure. Even worse is that I would regain all the weight I’d lost, and more. There are no diets that work.
In fact, studies show that dieting may put you at risk to gain even more weight, or make you put on weight if you are not already overweight. And whatever you do, discourage your teen from thinking about dieting. Research shows that people who tried losing weight as adolescents have twice the chance of battling their weight in the long-term. If you’re thinking they were overweight to start off with, they were not. Makes you think, doesn’t it? Instead of putting Junior on a diet, teach him or her self-control.
And whatever you do, discourage your teen from thinking about dieting. Research shows that people who tried losing weight as adolescents have twice the chance of battling their weight in the long-term. If you’re thinking they were overweight to start off with, they were not.
Research shows that people who tried losing weight as adolescents have twice the chance of battling their weight in the long-term. (If you’re thinking the candidates in the study may have been overweight to start off with, they were not).
Makes you think, doesn’t it?
Instead of putting Junior on a diet, teach him or her self-control. In a study by the US National Institutes of Health, it was proven that teenagers who practiced high self-control have healthier eating behaviors.
Which makes me wonder what kind of upbringing people with high self-control have, and whether this has an impact on their future dietary patterns…
This dieter wizens up
Having experienced failure on all the diets I tried, I eventually cottoned on to the fact that diets did not work. Duh. Once I had that pegged, I started researching what other factors contributed to poor eating habits.
What I came up with was that people who turned to food for comfort as children, whether they had experienced trauma or who became conditioned to overeating, had a tendency to become addicted to food. This becomes a habit and over time, eventually becomes an almost unbreakable habit.
You don’t have to stick to lettuce leaves to lose weight. Diets only lead to disappointment and feelings of guilt because of inevitable failure
If there are no diets that work, how do you stop a food addiction habit?
I believe this is different for everyone, but not too different to provide somewhat of a guideline:
The first step is that you need to assess what’s missing in your life. This tends to be a spiritual thing.
Take your mind off your weight and decide what health goal you would like to achieve, and then focus on that.
Learn about your body and what you really need to be healthy. This was a vital step for me, because knowing the effect my lifestyle had on my body, or how my body reacted to certain foods, was a huge motivating factor. For instance, once you realize what heated oilsdo to you, you’ll think more carefully about chowing down on that McDonalds burger and chips (shame, McDonalds always gets a mention, don’t they?!).
Do not attempt to make one huge sweeping change. You will fail. And you will battle to get back up again. Rather map out an action plan where you can take small steps at a time, going on to the next step when you’ve conquered one bad habit. For instance, the first step I took was to give up meat. I gave up meat when I started studying natural health and learned about Dr Colin Campbell’s China Study. The point is not to give up meat, but rather to take one small step at a time.
Don’t give up anything before you’ve added something. One of the most powerful and life changing tips I got was from South Africa’s original and first natural health guru, Mary-Ann Shearer, when I did her “100 Days to Health” program, and it is this: add more raw fruit and vegetables to your diet before you remove anything. This started me on a path of eating a side plate of raw food before any cooked food. Starting this small habit put an end to the painful gastric reflux I suffered from daily and also the medication I was using for the pain. The raw food helped make me feel fuller, healed my problematic and inflamed knees and started boosting my immune system. At the same time, I didn’t feel deprived because I had added instead of taking away.
Don’t only focus on what goes into your mouth. It has to be a lifestyle change. If you’re sedentary, start moving. Get more natural sunlight on your skin and through your eyes.
Implement and practice self-control. This is where Precise Portions range of goods come in handy, because they teach you how much you should be eating. Knowing how much a normal person ate was a revelation for me who simply ate what and how much I wanted (when I wasn’t dieting that is). Actually, I didn’t even know what hunger felt like, because I made sure I stayed full all the time! Don’t only practice self-control with your eating, but in every aspect of your life. This will develop your self-control in general, and that is a tool of great power.
End note about dieting
There are no diets that work. Dieting is a concept revered and abused by those who attempt to squeeze money out of the desperation of the obese and overweight.
Be encouraged. Do something small today that will make a difference in your life.
Little by little, chip away at the habit that if left to its own devices, will destroy you. Do something – anything – about it, today. And then do a little more tomorrow, and the day after that. Until it becomes a good habit. Good eating habits always lead to better health and losing excess weight.
Kevin Trudeau, currently incarcerated until the year 2022 for “unsubstantiated health, diet and financial remedies” says that:
“Pharmaceutical companies “don’t want us to get well” because curing disease is not nearly as profitable as treating it in perpetuity.”
Beat me up and slam me into prison too for sharing Trudeau’s theory, that the motivation for money will forever onwards override the human desire to really help people.
More than 2000 years ago, the Hippocrates Oath was uttered in all sincerity by those entering the medical profession, to ensure they would feel a sense of duty towards humanity.
It is no longer stated by those entering the medical profession today. Hm. I wonder why. Or maybe not so much.
Money has become more important than people. And watch out if you seriously try to educate the human race to this effect. You’ll be locked away just as Trudeau was.
To shut you up.
Because there’s way too much at stake. For pharmaceutical companies, and the government who stand to benefit from the profit of a naive population.
Oops, I wonder if they’ll be coming for me now.
The government is in place for the benefit of its people. (Side note: someone please tell the politicians that!) The government should do what it can to be of help to the people it serves. Or is supposed to serve.
Money lies at the root of what the government hides about dieting
But it doesn’t. Again, that is because too many work towards their own self-interests, and at times pretend to care about the people.
Here are five things about dieting and health that the government is hiding:
1. There are natural cures that the medical fraternity are not sharing with us. And the government won’t make them.
Let’s be fair though: did you know that General Practitioners do not study nutrition? For 7 years a doctor studies, but does not study the fuel of the body – what goes into it and what keeps it going. Isn’t that just a bit crazy?
Anyway, the point I’m making is that your doctor probably doesn’t know any better, because all he is taught is how to prescribe medication, and which ones to prescribe.
It’s the people at the very top who’s feet I am laying the blame on: those who decide how the nations are going to be educated.
Many people die when they don’t have to. I can’t get into it all now, but cancer, diabetes and all the other top diseases can be treated through diet alone. Without chemotherapy or medication.
If only most of our doctors realized how much good they could do if they were only taught the power of a healthy diet. And I’m not talking about the counting calories variety. I’m talking about using food as your medicine. Just as it was originally intended.
“Consumption of freshly killed pork products causes acute responses, such as inflammations of the appendix and gall bladder, biliary colics, acute intestinal catarrh, gastroenteritis with typhoid and paratyphoid symptoms, as well as acute eczema, carbuncles, sudoriparous abscesses, and others. These symptoms can be observed after consuming sausage meats (including salami which contains pieces of bacon in the form of fat).”
Why does the government hide this from us, and allow pork to be sold? Taxes me ‘dear, taxes.
3. Fish is not healthy for you
That is if you eat fish that comes from the Pacific Ocean.
Ready Nutrition says that a fish that was recently caught off the coast of the Fukushima prefecture, was found to have 124 times the safe level of radioactive cesium.
My question is: how do you know where that cheesy, battered piece of hake in a box is coming from, and whether it is safe to eat?
4. Just because the FDA (The Food and Drug Administration) approves something, doesn’t mean it’s safe.
Dr Mercola says that in 2011, most of the budget for the FDA came from fees that were paid by businesses that make payments for FDA services. In other words, the FDA gets paid to evaluate new applications for drugs and medical stuff.
As soon as someone pays someone else for doing something, there is risk for corruption. This is why, if you really want the truth when you do any research about diet related issues, you have to find research that is conducted without funding from a source that stands to gain profit from the findings.
This is what many people don’t get. They innocently believe that if a supplement’s manufacturer’s conduct research which says the supplement works for such-and-such, then it must work for such-and-such. Wrong.
I’m surprised this became a common saying, because it’s precisely advice like this “they” don’t want you to know. Dump the diet products and eat more things that rot fast. That is the way to real health, not diet food products.
5. Diet food is bad
Whenever a food product contains the words, “lite, light, fat-free, sugar-free”, be sure to check the ingredients. Because if it’s “fat-free”, there’s a good chance they’ve put other bad stuff in it to make it palatable. Or when it’s “sugar-free”, beware the aspartame in it that messes with your endocrine system.
“Uncertain science should no longer guide our nutrition policy. Indeed, cutting fat and cholesterol, as Americans have conscientiously done, may have even worsened our health”.
What to do?
I have merely touched the very tip of the iceberg as far as dieting, food, supplements, pharmaceutical companies and the government go, but I do hope that it will serve as an eye-opener.
Health and weight loss is actually very simple. And when it is made complicated, it’s time to start questioning why.
We need to look at the people who live the longest and stay the healthiest for the longest, and then simply copy their food habits. For instance, those who live in what’s been dubbed the “Blue Zones”.
Chances are, you’ve never even heard of them. Well, the powers that be wouldn’t want you to.
Because if you were serious about your health and diet, and followed the way of the Blue Zone folks, well then you wouldn’t get sick, would you? And if you didn’t get sick, who would not benefit from you?
