Before I get started on this article I shall shout something at you first . . .
NO! IT’S NOT TOO LATE. YOU ARE NEVER TOO OLD. YOU DO HAVE TIME.
STOP MAKING EXCUSES!
. . . shouting finished, let us continue.
There are many reasons why various people fail at destruction of the fat cells and the first one is oh, so simple. Fat destruction starts by using the most important tool in your body, the brain. It's all about the knowing, not believing. People "believe" in things they have yet to see as real such as fairies, unicorns and pots of gold at the end of rainbows. You can not just flimsily "believe" in this journey. . .
You have to KNOW you are going to destroy your fat, not lose it, destroy it. If you lose something your mind will try and help you find it again . We don’t want that. First step is KNOWING. Telling your mind that you ARE destroying your unwanted fat reserves, not tomorrow, not next week you have ALREADY started.
1st Step – The Mind Mantra
Keep repeating in your head “I have destroyed my fat. I am fitter. I am healthier”
No, it matters not one jot if you haven’t even put down your doughnut first. The first step is always convincing your mind you are a success.
Here is a little experiment to prove how strong your mind is over your body.
Stand near a wall (we don’t want any harm done here!!)
Tell yourself over and over again in your head you CAN NOT stand on one leg. Do this for about 3 - 5 minutes.
Now try standing on one leg whilst telling yourself you CAN NOT stand on one leg. Go on do it.
Notice how you CAN NOT stand on one leg either at all or not for as long as you have in the past.
NOW:
Sit down. Close your eyes. Tell yourself over and over again I CAN stand on one leg. Visualise yourself successfully standing on one leg. Keep the visualisation going and keep repeating to yourself that YOU CAN stand on one leg. Do this for 3 – 5 minutes.
Once again, constantly visualising your one leg standing success and telling yourself YOU CAN stand on one leg. Try standing on one leg.
Notice how you COULD do it this time. Maybe for even longer than you have in the past!
And so it is with destroying the fat. You have to KNOW you are a success the moment you make the decision to change. Tell yourself how wonderful your fat destruction is, how you love feeling so much more energised and how brilliant it is that you now want to move more and make better food choices. In the evening sit for a few moments just visualising yourself slimmer and fitter. Visualise yourself moving gracefully across a floor in an outfit that shows off your strong, sleek body.
There is a sentence a friend of mine loves saying:
You Have To Fake It Before You Make It.
In other words, you have to make the steps toward your goal KNOWING you have already reached it!
Step 1 is of the highest importance and I will not go into all the meta physical stuff. Simply put, control your thoughts and you control your body.
I have kept this short as I wanted you to read ALL of it. We will get to diet and excercise later. Hit subscribe for future installments!
Let us delve into your psyche. Having you ever been taught something like art, singing, violin, hockey, football etc., and the teacher keeps on making you do drills that bore the ass off you. Even better, have you ever taken a subject at school and there is no way on this planet you can learn it as it just does not interest you? This is similar to how your training mojo gets stood against a wall and shot. You want to get fit. You want to lose weight or whatever it is. You see a training method that millions of people profess to be the best. It works, there are photos and proof, plus all the reviews say so. Week one you love it, week two you stop doing it every other day, week three you avoid a couple of days by week four you dread it. Why? Because it is freaking boring as hell. It is not what you actually want to do. You started running but 'everyone' tells you running doesn't build muscle and you should be building muscle. You stopped. You started weight training, but 'everyone' told you to lift heavier until you actually dreaded failing. You stopped.
You started a system like P90Xor any other programme and it was mind blowingly hard. You can't do the moves and feel defeated. Stop looking to other people to tell you what is best for you. Only you can decide this. If you like running . . RUN. It is a wonderful thing to do. Running is a great cardio exercise. Not only does it get you out and moving, but you do it at your own pace and after a while it becomes not only training but can also be meditative. If you want to build bigger muscles learn to sprint train. Research it all it isn't as if there aren't a gozillion articles and books on how to run/sprint/do marathons etc. Find something you actually love doing and allow yourself all the time you need to become the best you possibly can at it. People stick to what they love.
2. Learn Your Limit
Always go at a pace that suits you. For instance, if you are, let's say, lifting as heavy as you can, even though it is KG's/LB's behind what you perceive as the weight you should be lifting KNOW YOUR LIMITS. It is great to push yourself to progress. It is a fool who tries to push themselves beyond what they are capable of too soon. This can lead to serious body damage. Leave your ego locked away before you start your training.
3. Stop Trying To Keep Up With The Experts
If you have started any form of training program do not try and keep up with the instructor/pro's. Learn what you can do with your body and what areas of training you need to progress in. Use assistance when you train, if needed, such as resistance bands for pullups/dips, blocks in yoga etc. Any professional athlete/trainer that is good will tell you that you only get good by starting at the beginning and working your body to get better.
4. Beware of Workouts Routines
Ever seen those workouts on-line like this:
Warrior Workout
400 pushups
200 lunges
100 pullups
300 dips
40 burpees
repeat 5 times.
If you have problems doing 10 pushups then these are not for you! I have noticed a lot of these type of routines especially in calisthenics and they are HARD. As a beginner doing 15 pullups is torturous if not impossible and these routines can leave you feeling like you have failed. You haven't, you have just taken on too much too soon. If you want to learn calisthenics make up your own basic routine which should incorporate pushups, squats, pull-ups and dips. Begin by doing small number sets ie 5 reps of each exercise and repeat for 15 minutes, then you can up your game by competing with yourself.
5. Is This Exercise Helping Or Harming?
There are many exercises out there that are pretty much of no plausible good for your body, they may be popular and may even be practised at some gyms but you may end up injured or cause your body imbalances through ignorance. If you want to aid your fitness find out about functional movements. We as humans naturally climb, run, pick up heavy things, swim, walk, dip down, jump, squat but there are certain training methods out there that are very questionable. As stated above do your research on whether a certain exercise will harm of help.
Stop "believing" you can do this and start KNOWING. Belief is what people have for fairies, unicorns and Santa. Knowledge is solid. Know you are getting fitter. Know that you are getting slimmer.
Desist with the assassination talk of things are too hard, results are not happening fast enough, you are not good enough or, the worst of all "I can't . . . . ". You can, you will, you know it.
7. No Pay, Still Gain
Many people stop training as they find a myriad of excuses not to go to the gym ie too expensive, too crowded, too far away, too full of know-it-alls, no parking (really you drive. Get a bike) etc. The answer is ludicrously simple. Train at home in your garden, bedroom, garage, spare room, the choice is yours. You DO NOT need equipment to start training. You may progress to building up a home gym, but all you need for now is your body and a maybe a timer. Heck, you don't even need training gear. You can build your body strength and shape through calisthenic and can do that butt naked if you so chose. Push ups, squats, burpees, jumping jacks, plank, yoga need no equipment.
8. Am I There Yet?
When you were a kid on a journey with your parents, did you keep asking "are we there yet?". Only to be told "NO, WE ARE STILL NOT THERE" and the journey would seem to last a lifetime. Can you guess what could possibly be stopping you from seeing the results in your body you want? IMPATIENCE! If you have read in a brochure/seen a commercial /noticed a "latest thing" on line that doing XYZ training will get the results YOU want in 30 days and you truly believe you can drop 15 kgs, get six pack abs and a contoured body and be able to maintain this all from scratch, within that sort of timeline then click your heels 6 times Dorothy as you are no longer in Kansas. Meanwhile, back in the real world, you have to teach yourself that gentle progress, no matter how slow, is how to keep your body beautiful. We have to work and enjoy working, at making our bodies our temples. If you don't like the work, go back to paragraph #1.
9. Stop Comparing Yourself To Others
Unless you are Dana Linn Bailey, Larissa Reis, Matus Valent, Vinn Diesel then you will NOT have their bodies and, if you do, keep an eye on your front window as the police will be there to question you soon. You keep your mojo ignited by loving your body no matter what stage of the game you are at. This body you own, in its present condition, is the body that is going to get you to the body destination you are aiming for. There is no problem in being inspired by what others have achieved, in fact nodding your head and thinking how awesome they have enabled themselves to be can add fuel to your stoked mojo furnace. Just don't wish to be them and have their bodies. Know that you are you and are capable of making your fitness, health and body supreme.
10. No One Is Judging you
You are the only person that has any true sway on what you do. This applies to your body, your education, your career, your happiness etc. Sure, you can blame others taking away from yourself any power over yourself or your life, but, you are not going to do that as you have an inner strength that is way more dominant than any of this petty stuff. If you are hurt or upset by what someone says about you that is your choice. Yes, you have a choice in all. Only you allow yourself to be hurt. Only you allow your mind to dwell on irrelevancies like what someone else may be thinking. As the saying goes, what others think of you is none of your business. The sooner you learn you are a supremely powerful person, you are in control of your own thoughts, your own deeds and the only judgement you care about is the one you give yourself.
.. . . . and if you think you are too old, too ill etc just click this link!
To keep your mojo going. Do what you love, love what you do, allow yourself to enjoy the journey, know you are an amazing capable being and you will get so much out of this.
“Mum, I'm feeling really sad. After the attacks in Paris, I just feel so upset. All these attacks are just getting closer . . . What can I do?”
This was my daughter Emily phoning the other night as she wanted me to help her quieten her mind in what she felt was an increasingly dangerous world. What is the answer? All those poor people who have had their lives ripped apart through violence. We should do something. What should we do?
People''s thoughts go out to those affected, they feel outrage, anger, sadness, pity, hopelessness, fear, revulsion . . . feel free to add any feeling you think is just in this sentence. Emily felt exactly this. She was saying how awful for the people involved and to her it felt as if the threat of terrorist violence was ever encroaching on her life to the point she felt frightened.
The following was my solution to her. You are more than free to totally dismiss it, but I would advise you to allow your mind to open about this a little more, totally up to you. This is either a resonating truth or complete BS, your choice!
The world we inhabit and all encapsulated in it live emitting and receiving frequencies. The PRF (Prime Resonant Frequency) of standard human is between 7 – 10 Hz, which is the same as the frequency of the earth we live on the "Schumann resonance". It has long been agreed in quantum physics that our different moods emit different frequencies. The happier we are the higher we resonate at. When we are in a room with happy people we seem to be “infected” by their laughter. The truth is our body's frequencies become raised by those being emitted around us.
What does this have to do with my daughter's question? EVERYTHING! It is all very natural and normal to feel empathy toward others who are experiencing pain, terror, panic etc. If you want to help you own an instant and powerful means to help those suffering.
Logically, sitting and feeling pity and sadness will only create more pity and sadness as you will be emitting a low energy frequency. Instead, take a moment to fill your mind with positive thoughts of love and compassion. Helping those in dire need of peace in their hearts and minds is easily accomplished if you sit and quietly meditate sending all the love and healing you can.
If you know the people involved personally then being a rock in their time of need will be much more appreciated than dragging them lower with your additional dialogue of pain, terror etc. We are here to help heal our loved ones not elongate their time in sadness.
The only healer of loss of a loved one is time and enabling ourselves to be thankful for the time they were in our lives.
Here is an example of how I dealt with the most painful event I have ever experienced. My mother was the closest person to me in my life. We talked pretty much daily no matter where we were. We went on walks, days out, lunches, I would be at her house or she would pop round to mine. We spoke freely of our feelings, events in life etc. If she was living abroad, then we would write. My mother was one of the only people who held me together the one time when my world seemed to crash around me.
When she died I made a supreme effort to honor her. I did not want to sit in a room full of people crying and wailing, talking of how ill she had been, how sad her days had been whilst suffering through all her illnesses . . . she very, very rarely sat and complained of her lot, was nearly permanently happy and so what right did anyone else have in brooding and perpetuating all her pain in her absence? I even told my mum when she was alive that going to her funeral was something I would not do and explained why. We agreed on this on one proviso, I had to go if there was no-one else going! She was a well loved being and trust me, plenty of people turned up. I instead went to a place me and Mum loved and walked and thought of what a wonderful person she was, how happy she makes me, how much love I have for her. She may have died, but it did and will never stop me from thinking and feeling all the positive things that she made me feel when she was alive. All her love, happiness, help, advice are still very much alive within me. It would have been a tremendous insult to her memory for me to sit and be miserable. When people are truly heartbroken they do not want someone to sit next to them and fill their already overflowing vessel of pain with more misery and hurting, they want succor. People want to be gently lead and be able to see a light at the end of the dark times.
My Mum . . . c'mon she just makes you feel happy too! It was her magically quality
Emily also expressed a fear of imminent disaster as in her mind the terrorist attacks seemed to be getting closer. This comment actually made me giggle as she was an unborn baby, I was 8 months pregnant with her, working in Arkwright House, Parsonage Gardens, Manchester in December 1992 going up to my office when the IRA bombed Parsonage Gardens!!! So, it's not getting closer, it is just all still going on.
There are various solutions to all these attacks. Sadly most of them are to answer the attacks by attacking . . . yeah like that has helped over the hundreds of years you have all tried that! Now what was it Einstein said?
I am not here to condemn or agree with any person's way of acting. I was not put on this planet to judge, there are plenty of other people who do that (and with some of the most horrific ideas of how to retaliate). As a species, we spend too much time invested in wanting what someone else has, in hating what someone else does, in being repelled by what someone else thinks. We have a the ability to wake up and change our thought processes.
Instead of being so heavily invested in what someone else is thinking/doing, we should invest more time into making sure our own thoughts and actions are ones that come from a place of inner calm. All of us should try living in the now rather than dwelling in the past or inventing the future. I heard a great quote today from Keven “Da Hulk” Washington on YouTube (I have put the video below as his story is a strong one . . excuse the pun):
“Do not let yesterday make your tomorrow”
also whilst talking on bad times and hard situations
“If you feel you will never get away . . you will never get away”.
There is a simple truth that keeps being repeated around the world. . .
We are creators of our own reality and therefore if you are constantly in a state of panic, sadness, fear or any other low vibrational feeling and spend your time reminiscing on instances that gave or may give you panic, sadness fear, then you will never get away from them. It's like talking to yourself in a mirror and expecting the other person to say something different.
Instead, start teaching yourself to leave these situations behind. A great lesson (among very many) I learned from Andy Shaw's book "A Bug-Free Mind" was to take small steps away from the "what ifs..." and "what may be's..." by introducing positive thoughts and holding them for 15 seconds. If you find this hard just think of one thing that makes you smile and hold that thought for a few seconds. Each day build on those seconds until you can hold positive thoughts on numerous things for 5 minutes, 15 minutes and so on. I have a really simple thought that starts this process off and works every time . . . it was the day I bought a red microwave with my partner. It was so red and gorgeous and it made us both happy, then I will go through all the things that make me happy and how much appreciate them. This can start my positive thinking off and keep going for over an hour. Just fill in each moment with all the things you love, that make you happy. You will see the changes in yourself and your life in a lightning speed.
So in essence, the simple steps to easing your and other's suffering, simply sit quietly and think positive, high vibrational thoughts. Your body will feel it, the earth will absorb it and remember, frequencies travel very fast. You are literally changing lives by your positive thoughts.
I have read the PubMed and trainers articles in abundance. Sat for hours poring over various books
telling me which foodstyle life is the best.
I have lived the raw food lifestyle, the vegan lifestyle, the low protein
high carb. I then moved on to try low
carb high protein, caffeine fuelled lifestyle. However, I have been studying food and its effects on the body for over 5 years
and one thing that I keep on hearing/reading is that our bodies shout out at certain times depending on what it needs.
Here I have a huge, nay, brobdingnagian problem with
this. My mind and my body seem to have
fallen out. My mind and my body do not
speak. It is either that or I have a
mute body or just a really loud mind.
When I am afflicted by any ailment such
as a cold (which I am nearly dead with as I write), my body seems to be
coughing and producing snot, but my mind is screaming:
"EAT CAKE! YOU NEED CAKE (oh and probably some wine
gums)".
I cough and splutter and wheeze a bit more and my mind
then shouts
"BACON.
THAT'LL CURE YOU, BACON THEN CAKE (oh and probably some wine gums)"
My Question:
Is my mind trying to kill me? Have I got, instead of a champion of self
preservation, some ethereal rogue assassin going from brain to brain popping
off people who float, seemingly automatically, toward any cake aisle (or wine
gums)?
My Brilliant Theory:
Maybe all these professionals
should rephrase. Our bodies are dumb,
mute, speechless and silent witnesses.
Our bodies do not get on with our minds. I would go so far as to say they totally and
utterly ignore each other when we are having our mad, bad food cravings.
Our bodies do not tell
us what food does, it has surpassed speech.
Speech to the body is so yesterday.
The body realises we don't listen and just moved swiftly to "LOOK
YOU IDIOT!"
My body is BRILLIANT at showing symptoms of bad eating. Hell
if medals and pointy shiny hats were made to celebrate such a thing my house
would be resplendent in hats and badges galore!
After coffee/wheat/having a cold my eyes do the *wrinkle, crinkle, sag, *
wrinkly, crinkly eyes
If I don't drink enough fresh water my body will, knowing
my vanity, just age my face by 2000 years. As my Nana used to say "Pfff that'll learn you" (she was a strong woman who had no need of grammar!)
My respiratory system quite blatantly heaves and
disallows any decent training if I perchance on wheaty badness.
My belly will go onto auto bloat should me and cake
party.
Sleep is a thing that will not happen if I have raw cacao
drinks after 4 pm.
I say this people.
Don't try to LISTEN to your body,
just look at the bloody thing
If:
when you stop jumping up and down your body doesn't for
another few seconds
your skin is covered in oily pimples
you are bloated
you have nail fungus
you have so many bags under your eyes Alexander Wang
wants to sponsor you
your skin is 50 shades of grey and definitely not sexy
your eyes are not bright and clear
you look 700 millenia older than you should
ad infinitum stuff . .
This is your body showing you that things are going
awry. THIS is your body transcending the
barriers of speech and shoving FACTS in your face.
To conclude.
Stop trying to get your mind to tell you what to do as
your mind just wants cakes (and wine gums).
This morning as I awoke a recollection of someone's post on my Facebook wall sprang at me like an angry leopard. I managed to get so wound up about it that I had to sit down and blog it all out.
Lets start with this one. How many of you out there have an illness that can be traced back to bad diet and lack of exercise (these are more numerous than you can possibly imagine)? You have piled on weight, maybe even having trouble walking far as you get out of breath, and, when you state that you think a chocolate bar would make you feel better especially with some ice cream, the 'loved ones' and 'friends are there cooing at you, saying "yeah, it will cheer you up" or even going so far as to give you some ideas of how to stuff more crap into your body the way they do it?
If you are a drinker, just a normal person who maybe goes out once a week for a few drinks; how many of you out there have gone through a really rough patch and your alcohol consumption has managed to up its game considerably? Even to the point where you are drinking a bottle of wine or more a night. Now, how many people in your life, that claim to love you, have told you its OK, heck it's not that much in the scheme of things, or even better, they do just the same so nothing to worry about.
Maybe your joints are aching a bit, and, you have faced the fact that your life has never been a particularly active or healthy one. Someone may suggest that you start learning a few simple easy bodyweight exercises . . . then the same 'caring people' who are telling you your alcohol intake is fine, your high fat diet is a great way to cheer yourself up will also turn round and tell you the person who said do exercise is a fucking idiot, you just take it easy, eat cake with a glass of wine and put your feet up.
BEWARE THE SYCOPHANT! They are a very dangerous breed
Now you have to ask yourself, those nights when you were going out and you looked in the mirror and didn't think you looked too good in that outfit so you asked one of these 'friends' what they thought and they said "You look great" . . . did you really? These 'friends' who are telling you to ignore your problems, eat crap, destroy your body and keep well away from change. You are seriously putting trust in these folk? Let me be honest with you here . . . I have been that drinker, I have been the person with depression eating crap, I have been the one sifting through people to find the right ones that will tell me the good things about my bad habits . . . and do you know what happened? I asked myself one simple question which was:
ARE YOU FUCKING STUPID?
The answer was a resounding YES. With this very useful piece of information in hand I set out to change my health and happiness and reap the rather fabulous rewards as I journey, as for me, this journey only stops when I run out of the ability to draw breath. Now ask yourself are you surrounded by friends and loved ones or sycophants who are creeping round you telling you what you want to hear rather than what you NEED to hear? Here's the truth for you, here is what, maybe, you don't want to hear but seriously need to. NO, drinking too much is not good for you, in fact its ridiculously harmful and can lead to a myriad of health and mental health problems. NO, eating crap will not make you feel better. The truth is it will make any illness worse, depression deeper and joint ache more severe. NO, healthy food is not tasteless crap, all green leaves and no joy. It is an abundance of flavours in a glorious myriad of taste, texture and delight. YES, the only way to address your problems are by eliminating the crap from your life and I'm not just talking about the food, booze, drugs and laziness, but all the sorry arse lame excuses and all the sycophants. You have to look for the cause, which is more likely to be some deep seated issue, be it lack of self worth, a bad experience in the past, relationship problems . . what ever, you need to start looking and dealing. YES,you can really do this and you can do it, for the most part, on your own . . . in fact I would urge you NOT to find a gym/training/diet etc partner as they invariably let you down at some point. To be a success you have to stand on your own without the fake support of others. However, if you are drowning and not waving, go to the professionals for help be it a psychiatrist, trainer or one hell of a lot of research in the library. YES,it does take time. It's glorious self realising, revitalising, educational, time and it is something you should see as a pleasure not a chore. You can't do a little happy celebration dance at each goal you achieve if you are perfect! This is the wonderful part about being superbly imperfect, we get to celebrate all through our journey! YES,you will reap the benefits of changing your life around YES,people will drop out of your life, the ones that hold you back, drag you down, do not want to see you succeed, but the ones that pick you up, love you unconditionally and motivate you along will appear in it.
Most importantly
YES IT IS WORTH IT
Next time you look in a mirror and ask "do I look great" remember the only person who can answer that one is you.
The subject of 'what is the best diet for weight loss', is akin to asking "where is the holy grail?" and will happily have us all skipping along from one craze to the next. In my research I have found over 570 different diets (no I did not just make that number up). There is the high carb diet, 18 pound in 4 days, baby boomer, the low carb diet, zen anti diet, blood type diet, fat smash diet, the ketone diet, the grapefruit diet, crash diet, the zone diet, low GI diet, the Mediterranean diet, paleo diet, swank diet, acacia berry diet . . and so on and so forth ad infinitum or, ad another person writing another diet in vain hope of it reaching the bestsellers list and earning lots of money from the masses. Check out how many results are out there on Google for 'quick fix weight loss' FOURTEEN MILLION!!!
I would love to be sitting here on a high pedestal able to state I have never been drawn into trying a fad diet, but, there would be about as much truth in that as if I were to tell you I never tried this breathing craze either. At some point, most overweight people will look for the quickest route to the results they want, preferably, the quickest route with the least effort in the shortest time frame. So popping a magic pill or eating a miracle berry promises to have the right amount of immediacy and results requested.
It would be a fool and their keyboard that states fad diets don't work, as, without question, some of them do, and I would be so bold as to state some people not only lose the weight but keep it off forever. Here is the kicker . . . those people are NOTin the high numbers the quick fix seekers so desperately want to read in the column marked 'Success Stories' in fact, they are very few and far between.
“It took a time to get this out of shape, it's going to take time toget back into shape . . . there is no quick fix”
Let us think on another little subjectola for a minute too. When you read nearly any weight loss diet book they have one thing in common. The subject of 'exercise' will also pop up. I am not now casually wandering into the 'which exercise programme is best' lions den at this point as the answer is pretty much the same as the answer to which diet is best . . . and here it comes.
“There is not a one size fits all, either in diet or exercise. It is what you enjoy and can stick to”
Just because there is not a definitive answer there are however a couple of things for you to ponder on, that have, without a shadow of a doubt, aided me.
Some finds on the way to the grail . .
First, I would dearly love for the word 'calorie' to be deleted overnight from everyone's memory. That word is over used and not researched enough. For one thing . . a calorie is not burned by a human as they don't actually exist (put that in your pipe and smoke it). A calorie is just a scientific experiment to found out how much heat is needed to, quite literally, burn certain food stuffs. They even have specially fancy ovens called calorimeters that is just a metal chamber .. which we as humans are not!
Let us replace the word 'calorie' with 'nutrient'. Instead of counting these stupid non existing things, we should be ensuring our bodies are happily getting the nutrients they need. By so doing you will notice that the foods that give us the bad skin, asthma, eczema, sleep apnea etc., and make us gain considerable weight, are not the nutrient dense ones.
The stupidly, ridiculously simple way to get a healthier leaner body, is to eat things that don't come with a label in order for you to know the content. When you go into a green grocer you don't have to check whether the apple you are about to buy is full of homogenised fat or salt, or whether it has hidden 'E' numbers in it. Why? Because you know instinctively it is 100% natural as you are getting the WHOLE food.
Yeah, yeah we can all go into the rant of "well what about pesticides!" REALLY? You want to do that whilst you are looking at the petrol/diesel receipt, eating your fast food burger which you have just picked up in a drive through after putting all your Styrofoam encased foods into plastic bags from the out of town supermarket in your vehicle? REALLY?? Step away from that argument right now! Try finding out about how our bodies natural systems can actually cope with it . . if that is too much for you, buy organic.
If you want I could tell you how eating only one piece of cake a day is fine. How lathering butter on toast has recently been found to be good for you. Eating 20 rashers of bacon a day is a new breakthrough in weight loss or eating your body weight in nuts and avocados is absolutely fine as they are natural beasts. The main point I am making here is people love hearing good things about their bad habits. If you want to lose the weight for good, you need to change the way you eat FOR GOOD. You cannot expect to lose weight over a short period of time, go back to your old way of eating and keep the weight off. As Albert Einstein famously said:
"The definition of insanity: is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
I found out what works best for me, through testing different foods, what bloats me, makes me tired, gives me wrinkles overnight, makes it hard for me to breathe, makes me depressed/angry and all of them aid in my weight gain.
The main culprits for me were: wheat (bloat, wrinkles, breathing), caffeine (mood swings/depression), chocolate especially dark chocolate, (severe headaches, from happy to sad in the blink of a wrapper), processed food (tired and wrinkled), cereals (bloat), processed sugar (mood swings, energy troughs). Don't just take my word for it . . test yourself.
Starving yourself slim is not an option either. All under eating does is seriously screw up your metabolism and then a few weeks/months down the line allows you to watch your weight not only come back, but come back with friends! Been there . . done that.
STOP LOOKING TO BE "...ETARIAN", "...IST" or an "...ER"
We go looking for answers to our dietary dysfunctions and find a lot of sense in many communities out there that are '.....eterians' '....ists' or "...ers". There is however many a pitfall to becoming part of these communities if you are not careful. You have to be the BEST '....eterian' '.....ist' or "...er" be it vegetarian, fruitarian, paleoist, raw foodist, low carber, zone dieter etc, not only that, but these groups will turn on their own like some strange demented pack. One wrong food stuff mentioned, if you want something out of bounds . . that's it daggers at dawn, and not the sort for eating with! You are then not allowed in their gang anymore. Just call yourself a healthy eater and stick with it! No food is to be banished you just have to know what food does to YOUR body, YOUR health and how YOU feel when you eat it.
If you want to lose weight and be fitter and healthier forever, think of this as a lifestyle change, not a 'Get Slim Quick' scheme. As with most things in life, the more you enjoy something, the more time and effort you put, the better the results will be. I have found that I am not alone in the fact that wheat products bloat me like a puffer fish that has been poked with a stick, processed sugars make me feel lethargic, big cooked meals make me want to sleep; whereas fruits and veggies just leave me feeling satiated and energised.
Another consideration for you. Have you ever noticed how most people that are unfit or overweight look grey especially smokers? It is down to a lack of oxygen. The more fresh water we drink, fresh fruit and vegetables we eat, the more exercise we do, the more oxygen is put into our bodies (if you want things to 'burn' you need oxygen). The more processed foods we eat, the more stimulants we consume (be it coffee, cigarettes, drugs, booze etc), and the less we exercise the more our bodies are depleted of the oxygen we actually thrive on.
TO SUM UP
If you really want to do this shizz, get your facts right. Learn about nutrition and forget about calories. Eat nutrient dense foods. Drink plenty of water. Eliminate the processed crap. Find out what foods your body reacts badly to. Experiment until you find a food plan you really enjoy that you can stick to. Avoid pills, potions or anything that is dehydrated that you have to rehydrate to consume . . just eat the fresh stuff! Find a training plan you enjoy that gets your heart rate up, intervals for the win. As with food, you DO NOT need to be out there spending money on the next craze in exercise. Body weight exercises are free and have worked for time immemorial. The more muscle you build, the more fat your body will rid itself of. Oh and before I go . .no you can't spot reduce fat. If you want a flat tummy or to get rid of your bingo wings, you have to exercise and your body's own little computer will decide where the fat goes from first, so don't believe that crock!
