American Weight Loss: A Sure Bet

I think it is really odd that nearly every diet product or book talks about overeating, or excessive hunger, when for most people that isn't the problem at all, but rather the problem is how processed the foods are. If the foods are microwaved, full of artificial chemicals, artificial flavors, flavor enhancers, and other toxins, they will cause weight gain despite their calorie or fat content, no matter how much you starve yourself.

Microwaving food changes it's chemical composition so that your body doesn't recognize many of the vitamins anymore, making the microwaved foods only slightly more healthy than eating a few table spoons of sugar, no matter what the nutritional information says on the package. Sure your stomach is satisfied, but is your body? Maybe a lack of recognizeable vitamins is the cause of some of this country's overeating problem. After all, cravings are your body's natural way of asking for a missing nutrient. Giving your body the nutrition it craves nearly always stops the craving, and you stop feeling the need to eat more food than is healthy. But I'm not here to talk about overeating.

Rarer are those who are not peddling some "miracle cure" willing to mention that stress induces the body's natural starvation instinct and causes you to literally store away every spare calorie in preperation for a food shortage. Just as "flight or fight" increases adrenaline and heart rate, it also prepares you to be able to live off of your reserves if necessary by saving everything possible. Lack of sleep causes stress to your body in the same way, and with the same effects.

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More often than not, we hear people talking about starving themselves and working out three times a week or more for a minimum of two hours each session. People who have money to spare or no children can do these things, and waste all of that valuable time, but we "normal" people simply can't afford to neglect our families, our jobs, or our sleep like that. To do it all, something has to give.

Sometimes we are lucky, and hear a voice of reason through the din. People talking about exercise and healthy activity levels in a way that is not overdoing things or that takes hours out of a person's already busy schedule.

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After over 12 years of consistent, steady weight gain caused in part by medications that I am still taking, I have been eating more food made from scratch and less processed, prepackaged, and resturant food. In only 4 months, not changing anything else about my lifestyle, I have lost 15lbs (and saved a tidy bit of money in the process).

Imagine what I could have lost had I exercised at all, slept better/more effectively, avoided stress, or lowered my caloric/fat intake even by the tiniest margin!

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Diet is a Latin word that means "lifestyle". When you change your "diet" you change the way you live, not just the amount of food you eat. Try natural, unprocessed, unmicrowaved, untainted food. You will be surprised at how much weight you will loose by changing only the number of chemicals in your diet and how processed your foods are.

It means alot to your body.