OK, so there are a lot of diets out there on the market. Almost all of them are designed for quick term short gains. This means you get results over the first 7 to 14 days, but they NEVER work in the long run. Many diets are hard to stick to, they’re boring or require special foods. Others expect you to weigh out or calorie control everything you put in your mouth. The bottom line is that ANY diet will ALWAYS give you results for the first few days but after that, the weight you took off will creep back on, sometimes with extra pounds and you’ll feel like a big fat failure.
The word Diet, according to Dictionary.com has 5 meanings:
- food and drink considered in terms of its qualities, composition, and its effects on health;
- a particular selection of food, especially as designed or prescribed to improve a person’s physical condition or to prevent or treat a disease;
- such a selection or limitation on the amount a person eats for reducing weight;
- the foods eaten, as by a particular person on group;
- food or feed habitually eaten or provided.
Only number 3 actually talks about restricting intake, so why is it more than 50% of the world’s population is either overweight or obese when there are literally hundreds of diets we can choose from?
Why don’t diets work? A diet should be a lifestyle choice, not an event or quick fix to a bigger underlying issue. Diets don’t work because they are all presented as short term solutions which force the body into a fight or flight scenario, rather than presented as a life-long eating plan.
The bottom line is that scholastic education is insufficient when it comes to health- we are not taught about food, its nutritional value (or lack thereof) or how each component – carbohydrate, protein, fat and nutrients (vitamins, minerals, amino acids, antioxidants) – are utilised by our body.
The answer to life is not “42” (to borrow a line from Douglas Adams), it is in “education”. This page will present a range of tools and tips that will reveal all you need to know in order to make the right lifestyle choices, eat the right foods and prolong a healthy and happy life.
Top 5 Tools:
Overall Program / Lifestyle Choices:
An overall education via a holistic program is the best way to battle the bulge. This is one of the best home education packages on healthy eating available on the market. If you believe, as I do, that education is the key, then this program is for you.
Portion Control Re-education:
It’s easy to over eat – most of the Western World is plagued by over sized food portions and All You Can Eat buffets which educate our stomachs and our brains to eat more than we should. Does anyone ever eat the serving quantity of a packet of food, or do they just assume it’s 1? Portion control is one of the biggest issues that can be easily resolved with re-education via a meals service or software tracking program.
Metabolism Boosters:
Our metabolisms get slower as we age and slow down. There are several ways to boost your metabolism, the most successful being exercise, particularly resistance training (see Exercise Tips and Tools page).
Organics for Massive Nutrients:
It’s well know that many nutrients are missing from our foods as we deplete our soils, genetically modify our foods and add growth hormones to ensure that things look right even if they’ve been grown in sub standard conditions. As a kid remember the taste of a fresh picked tomato off a bush in the back yard? What about a strawberry from pick your own? Do things taste like that now? Organic foods are the closest we get to a perfect world, and they provide significantly more beneficial nutrients without genetic modification or growth hormones, and they just taste better!
Supplements and Vitamins:
In a perfect world supplements and vitamins would not be necessary – everything from the earth would provide the myriad of trace elements required for the body to function perfectly. But we don’t live in a perfect world – the lack of nutrients in our food and inability or expense of organic foods means our intake may be lacking. This, coupled with extreme stress levels of the modern working world and lack of work/life balance means we can benefit from taking supplements or vitamins to “top up” our diet.