Right is to Wrong as Health is to Profit

It costs the state over $100 billion a year, over 100 million Americans are still at risk and more than 400,000 have died from it over the past 12 months...

It is sadly self inflicted and second only to smoking and left to its current trends it will easily take the number one slot within the next 5 years. It is of course Obesity! And yet no one seems to butt an eyelid despite it being a serious major problem, in fact an epidemic. But how often do we think why?

Who is responsible? The food manufacturers, the government or us - the individual. Jeff Garcia of Aspirational Solutions said "In simple terms we all have choices as to what we decide to put inside our own body in the form of food, and therefore the ultimate responsibility lies with the individual with respect to their chosen diet. Obesity is having a massive impact on the western world at large with all the causes well documented but comparatively little in terms, of solid long term real solutions. As a research specialist, we have severe concerns regarding the current obesity trends and have developed methodologies to help combat the problem for individuals based on our nutritional inheritance. At the end of the day it is up to each and every individual to take responsibility for their own being."

Our nutritional world is full of contradiction. On the one hand our Supermarkets sell slimming products alongside the very products that contribute to people being overweight and obese in the first instance. The Grocery industry employs highly paid and powerful lobbyists to work with Government to ensure; not only that there is no adverse legislation passed that could in any way affect the industry's sales; but indeed that Government representatives never communicate to the public at large in a manner that may have an adverse effect on the sales of a grocery product.

There would be a public outcry at the mere thought of BSE (Mad Cow Disease) being detected in livestock and yet many food manufacturers, particularly fast food chains consistently produce food containing ingredients which could be justifiably described at nothing less than 'toxic'. In reality why would any of the offending manufacturers want to change when they are making billions of dollars profit each and every year. In a similar vein, do the health and diet companies really want you to succeed in losing weight? Perhaps not, as their mere existence is dependant on you not being successful. They are dependant on 'successful failures'. An Internet search on the word "Diet" reveals in excess of 96,000,000 web pages of diet plans, pills, potions, miracle cures and yet we are in the midst of an obesity epidemic. So we must ask what is it that is simply not working. We only have to look around us to see with our own eyes that there is a problem.

Bob Schwartz - an American health expert and nutritionist has stated "Diets are in fact designed not to work." The evidence of 60% of the American population is proof enough.

Both the grocery and diet industries are to too big, too powerful and above all worth billions. There is no intention nor reason for them to change. Are they not part of the problem? You and only you have the power to change and therefore you need, must and can 'gain control' as an individual. There is only one successful method to enduring weight loss and that is to embark on a nutritional scheme that is in line with the expectation of your body. The range of 'acceptable foods' is believed to be far less narrow that originally thought. This is based on the fact that we have existed on this planet for 99.5% of our time as 'humanoid beings' for well over 2 million years as a 'hunter/gatherer'. We primarily existed on a diet of meat, fish, shellfish, plant vegetation, fruit, seeds and nuts for the majority of this time until the agricultural revolution. This is eons of time during which our body has formed natural biological and chemical processes to best extract the nutrients it needs from these food types during the digestion process. The foods were natural and 'raw' and in effect the body had to 'work hard' to extract the carbohydrates, proteins and fats it required, in addition to the essential vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals it needs to live healthily. This is all just part of the process of evolution where only the fittest survive.

But how divorced is today's diet of manufactured processed food to the foods consumed by our distant cousins. Our diet has so dramatically changed in only the last 40-50 years - and not for the better. Our food has become more processed which has in effect, has made it 'too easy' to digest and it does not contain the same balance of carbohydrates, protein and fats that our body has been biologically designed to accept. It also contains far less vitamins and minerals, and more importantly, little or no phytochemicals that our body has relied on for disease protection over hundreds and thousand of generations. So why should we be surprised that Mother Nature has reacted in light that 40-50 years is not even the width of an atom on the evolutionary scale. In terms of digestion our body is doing exactly the same at it was 30,000 years ago. It is therefore us that has to make the change as an individual to achieve a nutritional balance that has formed part of our genetic inheritance over millions of years of evolution. Nature will not change in our lifetime, so we must.

Therefore ...No change = No enduring weight loss and good health.

The changes a successful dieter must achieve are:

1. To ensure a sufficient daily quantity of water is consumed to allow the processes of cell metabolism to occurs efficiently, particularly relating to digestion and energy release. The vast majority of these metabolic chemical reactions require the presence of the H2O molecule - therefore adequate consumption of water is essential, but surprisingly this is only achieved by the minority.

2. To revert back to consuming more foods that are natural, free from being heavily processed and therefore allied to nutrition that the body has been designed for and expects. The more natural the food is, the more it is in line with our genetic nutritional inheritance and the more energy required for its digestion. The reverse is also true. Additionally, a wide range of natural food contains all the micronutrients, including phytochemicals that are essential for our healthy existence, aside from the well documented vitamins and minerals.

3. Develop a lifestyle that energizes and works the body's muscular structure which is a prerequisite to the biological processes that result in the promotion of good health and well being. Exercise acts as a evolutionary 'biological trigger' to indicate to the body that your 'self being' is capable of securing food as in the act of 'hunting and gathering'. Not exercising triggers a reaction to 'store fat' and it is a biological mechanism to support survival. It lowers the rate of energy consumption and metabolism and is based on the assumption that your 'self being' is not capable of 'hunting' and is therefore unable to secure food. This is Nature's survival technique to reserve energy and maintain a constant body temperature as exercise and movement generates heat and helps to maintain warmth.

4. Mentally re-educate to retrain the mind to overcome the addictive properties of the 'modern' food types such as refined sugars and processed fats. A switch to more natural foods initiates the process, but the mental addiction of 'emotional hunger' must also be addressed to distinguish it from normal 'biological hunger'. Mental training is an essential ingredient of any successful training process.

Weight loss can never be maintained without all 4 of these stages being consistently applied and actively used. They are all interdependent.

Living in a nutritional hell is a mental choice...it always was.


Copyright (c) 2006 Jeff Garcia

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