Diets don’t help you lose weight long-term.
Biological factors ensure your attempt at losing weight while dieting will fail. There are metabolic and hormonal as well as neurological changes that contribute to the attempts to lose weight. When you go on a diet, because in your mind your trying not to eat you actually tend to notice the food that much more. Once you do start to lose weight the hormones that make you hungry increase and the ones that make you feel full decrease. Your metabolism slows down as you lose weight as well and as your body is using fewer calories the extras’ get stored as fat. Overtime even sticking to the diet will only make you gain the weight back as it will just catch up to you.
The early life — probably the first thousand days after conception, or up to around age 2 — is incredibly important for our health as adults. The risk for disease — heart disease, lung disease and others — is programmed in early life. You can’t give somebody a pill to redress childhood abuse and you can’t put a stent in a coronary artery to redress the stress resulting from the lack of support your parents gave in your early life. Every country in the world has a national policy that gives working moms paid time off work after they have babies, except for Papua New Guinea, Suriname, a few South Pacific Island nations and the United States. We also have the most child poverty of all rich countries in the world. We don’t invest in the part of life that really matters.
Eating healthier isn’t always an option.
Most don’t eat healthy because it’s cheaper just to buy the unhealthy options. More sugars, sodium, and saturated fats increase the risk of chronic diseases. American diet has become energy-rich but nutrient-poor, partly because agricultural methods have stripped nutrients from the soil. We eat more processed food with less fiber, fewer micronutrients, and fewer phytochemicals to protect against things like heart disease and diabetes. Although it’s not like the FDA doesn’t know this however if more people eat unhealthy then they will eventually have a reason to go to a doctor and get meds for their problem.
That only helps big pharma not you. So when you’re unable to buy more healthy choices then you should look into growing your own nutritional choices. It wouldn’t take much room nor much time to start your own little mini garden. You could even do it indoors if absolutely necessary, just get a few pot hangers to hang from the ceiling.
Stress causes weight gain!
If we are not eating more, why are we so much fatter these days? Well an enormous difference in daily work-life balance stress levels is one of the reasons our diets are calorie-dense and nutrient-poor. Being stressed causes us to forget to eat or eat fast and choose our meals poorly.
We tend, in this country, to think that the choices you make are what determine your health. But individual behaviors are less important for the health of a society than we think. Diet and exercise are important, but not as important as other factors in a society. Healthier societies have a smaller gap between the rich and the poor than we do. That gap causes an enormous amount of stress in our society — road rage, air rage, stress at work, child abuse. I say stress is the 21st century tobacco. We have learned that inequality kills. We have changed from a country that, in the 1950s, believed in economic justice. We had high tax rates on the rich, and we had welfare programs for other people. But we have changed from a community focus, or a collective focus, to one in which today we have to pursue our health as individuals.
That may be because of the tremendous amount of stress and frustration in our society, and everyone is affected. The nature of relationships changes in big-income-gap situations: We drive bigger cars to show that we are superior to others, and we wear designer clothes to make a statement. Some of these things may be harmless, but we have higher rates of heart disease and lung disease and almost all other causes of mortality, except for cancer, than comparable countries.
So better health habits aren’t the fix to our problem?
We tend, in this country, to think that the choices you make are what determine your health. But individual behaviors are less important for the health of a society than we think. Diet and exercise are important, but not as important as other factors in a society.
First, modern agricultural methods have stripped increasing amounts of nutrients from the soil. We forget, sometimes, that the nutrient value of the food we grow depends on the nutrient levels of the soil in which they are grown. and how stress directly shifts metabolic functions toward fat creation and fat storage. But there is one more very important difference. The food we eat has about the same nutritional value and tastiness as the packaging it’s wrapped in. We eat and eat and eat, and yet our bodies are not satisfied.
Second, our diets contain more processed foods and fewer fresh foods that are good for us. Processed food generally contains less fiber, fewer micronutrients, and fewer phytochemicals that protect against heart disease and diabetes, according to recent studies. As a simple example, apples are chock full of fiber and micronutrients.
So having expectations
Essentials our bodies need that aren’t in most diets:
- Vitamins A, D, B, C, E, and K and all of these can be found in fresh fruits, veggies, whole grains, low fat milk, fish and eggs.
- Minerals
- Sodium
- Potassium
- Chloride
- Calcium
- Phosphorus
- Magnesium
- Sulfur
- Zinc
- Iodide
- Selenium
- copper
- fluoride
- chromium
- molybdenum
- manganese
We can make adjustments as needed to eat a healthy meal at least once a day!!