Like most of us, if you hear of just one more diet plan, you are going to scream, “Bloody murder!” You have tried them all: low fat, high carb, low carb, and high protein. Why is it that nothing you try defeats the midriff bulge? If it worked for others, why doesn’t it ever work for you?
Now admit it. You cheat from time to time. Don’t you? You are human, or what? How long can you stay on a diet that you basically hate?
Well, there is always working out…
Why Diets Don’t Work
Most of us grew up with the notion that, if you want to lose weight, you need to go on some kind of diet, any diet. The less interesting, the less tasty the diet, the more progress you make. If you want to have some fun, you can try the old Beverly Hills Diet: papaya, mango and all the popcorn you can eat. (Oh, by the way, you must leave out the salt and butter!)
We look at diets as a temporary regimen to accomplish a limited goal, such as losing 20 pounds. Then you can go back to eating much like you did before, and hope that, with a little exercise, the pounds will stay off long enough to please your Significant Other. Of course, when the holidays come back around, you can no longer be held responsible.
Diets don’t work, because humanity basically has one diet.
For example, we don’t eat grass and stalks, the way an elephant does. We eat fruits and vegetables and meat. We also learned to eat grains. As time went on, humanity in a fast-paced modern society got very good at refining the grains and the sugars, living off of what became synthetic food, factory food.
Why Counting Calories Is Useless
Some of us got smart about this. If you can learn to count calories, you can eat anything you want and enjoy complete freedom. It is just that you have to stop when you have run out of calories. Learn to be happy with half the calories you normally eat, and you will start losing weight, even if it happens to be mostly water.
After all, calories are a measurement of the energy food provides you. Fat has the most calories, and carbohydrates the least.
So, logically, you would stuff yourself with carbohydrates, and lose weight! When it comes to carbohydrates, do you think farmer’s market, or bread, pastas and sugar, including cake and pastries! (There, I got you again!)
An elementary study of nutrition swallows up this entire approach. It is really all about metabolism. We metabolize some food much more efficiently than other kinds. Some types of fat, for example, such as Essential Fatty Acids, found in salmon, metabolize very well. Fresh organic fruits and vegetables also metabolize well. Nuts, such as macadamia, also metabolize very well.
Calories are only half the picture. They are meaningless without addressing how well we metabolize what we eat.
Why Clean Eating Beats Exercise
At some point, you get really smart, and figure out that you should ignore what you eat, and just bust your ass lifting weights and running. At the very least, you will build muscle, and muscle consumes more energy than other tissues. You then check the charts and find out just how much exercise it will take you to burn a generous slice of chocolate cake… a mini marathon. Yikes!
A close look at weight loss reveals that our eating habits have a much greater impact on our body weight than our exercise routines.
If you look at all the exercise books, you will notice in the fine print that they always recommend you limit your consumption of certain foods. It is never just a set of Nautilus equipment or a membership at the local gym.
It turns out that much of the Standard American Diet (S.A.D.) is literally nutritionally starved. In a classic case, boxed or canned fruits or vegetables are bleached of all their nutrients, and then additional nutrients are reinjected, so that the food manufacturer can call them “fortified.”
If you think of the corn flakes in many cereals, you will find more sugar than corn in the box. They might throw a few vitamins and minerals in the mix just to confuse you.
How to Put Nutrition First
To get a handle on your weight, you might start by putting nutrition first. Eat the foods that nurture your body, including essential vitamins and minerals at the beginning of the day. This may be way more important that avoiding certain foods, such as that slice of chocolate cake.
Some people start the day with fruit and vegetable shakes, perhaps adding yoghurt or other protein. Others treat themselves at breakfast and after dinner to a few dietary supplements. A careful study will reveal how combinations of them will ensure that they are “bioavailable,” that your body actually absorbs them.
You might start by throwing out any and all sodas, which have the highest concentration of sugar and corn syrup of anything we consume. You can develop a taste for tea, with or without caffeine, along with fresh, sparkling water with no added ingredients. You can reward yourself with fruits, vegetables and meat, such as free-range chicken or grass-fed beef.
At the end of the day, focus on conscious eating and the rest will fall into place.
Love Your Mother… Eat Clean, Vibrant Food
The Paleolithic approach to eating is beginning to supersede other interesting approaches, such as the Mediterranean Diet. This is a bit mystifying to some people, as a vegan diet was held to be the best option for such health luminaries as Dr. Andrew Weil and Dr. Mark Hyman.
A strictly vegan diet proscribes meat in any form, as well as eggs and milk products. You can never again enjoy a cheese omelet or a big scoop of chocolate ice cream!
People are beginning to appreciate just how much more healthy and physically fit humans were before the Agricultural Revolution made grains the essential staple, whether wheat, rice or oats. Humanity lived off fresh fruit and vegetables found in the rainforest, and freshly killed game and fish. Of course, we eventually learned to cook, but we weren’t into processing or denaturing our food.
A clean eating program is eating with love for our Mother Earth. You stop running interference against what she has naturally provided you, and receive all her gifts with gratitude.
Food is important enough to be celebrated, and eaten fresh every day.
If we are going to eat meat, let us love the cows, pigs, turkeys and chicken we consume. If we eat fish, we become intent to restock the streams.
Biohack Your Brain in Just 90 Days with WildFit
Eric Edmeades is a world-class nutritional leader who made a close study of evolutionary biology and nutritional anthropology, along with behavioral psychology, that provides breakthrough insights into why we eat the way we do.
Eric reveals how to eliminate self-destructive patterns through an expansion of our awareness of food and the use of energy in our lives.
Eric actually went to live among the Hadza people of Tanzania, considered bushmen. His experience following them around for weeks transformed his conception about what it means to be human.
It seems as though primal people are ahead of us in many practical aspects of life, such as the ability to sleep soundly at night, to live without being vulnerable to food cravings, to have bursts of energy whenever you need them, to maintain an alert mind that can move you into action whenever the situation demands it.
Best of all, the bushmen taught Eric how to naturally lose weight without even trying, or gain weight, if so desired. It has everything to do with clean eating and a clean head. For many of us, this means being deprogrammed from all the unconscious ideas we have picked up over the years, largely from the continuous bombardment of advertising.
Ready To Feel Amazing?
If you have had it with diets and calorie counting, and you don’t trust yourself to work it all off with weight lifting, then you owe it to yourself to take a close look at Eric’s clean eating program. You may find yourself going wild, and never wanting to return to your more domesticated ways.
Clean Eating Program That Requires No Dieting or Exercise In Order to Lose Fat appeared first on http://consciousowl.com.
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