Get Off the Diet Roller Coaster: Ten Tips for Achieving Your Ideal Weight

Roller CoasterAfter just two weeks the diet roller coaster has already ejected a good number of its riders.

Some of those didn’t even get on. The pull of holiday goodies was simply too strong.

Besides the festivities really weren’t over until seven days into the year. Well, that wrecks it for the whole year, so why bother?

Others jump on with great enthusiasm, strapping themselves in and throwing their arms up in the air with abandon. Many of these fall off rather early too: their arms quickly tire and they can only handle so much of the stress of the ups and downs.

Some make it through numerous hills and valleys, but find themselves frequently dizzy and nauseous.

And by mid January, most people have already lost their grip and tumbled to the ground.

Here’s a radical idea. Let’s get off the diet roller coaster forever. In fact, I propose we skip that area of the amusement park altogether.

Let’s not give our money to the hucksters selling us the illusion that this ride is taking us somewhere. The facts are:

FACT 1: Diets don’t work.  Once you get off the diet all the problems return. Diets often distract us from dealing with the real problems.

Fact 2: Follow the money. Diets have never worked but the diet industry (including physicians and pharmaceutical companies) makes billions of dollars every year perpetuating the myth. We foolishly keep getting back onto the ride that takes our money and makes us sick.

Fact 3: Governments, Big Agriculture, Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Health Care and Big Health Insurance industries DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU! I am saddened by the blind trust the average person has in the “system”.

Fact 4: You must take responsibility for yourself, for your own health and education.

Fact 5: Food does not have to be complicated. We simply need to reconnect to it.

So what can you do? How do you relinquish your lifetime pass on the diet roller coaster?

Here are just ten examples:

1. Learn more about food. Why is broccoli good for you?  Why should you be suspicious of GMOs?

2. Cook more of your own food. Food made with hands is better for us than factory food. By preparing your own food you can avoid the chemical poisons of food additives.

3. Grow some of your own food. Some herbs and a tomato in a pot on the patio. Turn a patch of lawn into a salad garden. Plant berry bushes that grow well in your area. (Turn children loose in a raspberry patch for a soul-filling event.)

4. Shop the periphery of the supermarket. The fresh real food is usually found around the outside and the junk is usually on the middle shelves, especially at the ends of the aisles. Even better, forego the supermarket for the farmer’s market.

5. Get to know your grower. When you learn about the inputs required for successful organic farming, you won’t mind paying a bit more at all. You will gain an appreciation for the resources required to feed you and perhaps you’ll stop taking the earth for granted.

6. Buy colourful foods. Fruits, vegetables, and berries come in a rainbow of colours. We are genetically programmed to associate bright colours with good nutrition. It’s no mistake that junk food is marketed with brightly coloured packaging and messaging (but the food itself is often bland and colourless). We are being misled.

7. Stop poisoning yourself. Avoid “unfoods”.  You know, they come in a colorful bag inside a colourful box wrapped in plastic, with a shelf-life of decades and a list of ingredients that sound like they could power a space station, er, I mean “look”, because they are invariably unpronounceable! Avoid factory food. Eat whole real food.

8. Stop counting calories. Yes, they matter to some degree but focusing solely on calories is dangerous. (That is how fats became villains, even though many are actually heroes). Nutrient density, the total nutrients per calorie, is what really matters. Micronutrients are probably more important than macronutrients (fat, protein, carbs). Choose foods that give you the most nutrient bang for the buck/calorie. Go for quality, not quantity.

9. Start paying attention to your body. My great-grandfather said your body will tell you whether you should eat it. I’m often chided for avoiding bread but it bloats me and adds up to eight pounds to my weight in one day. My body is telling me bread isn’t serving it. If you have inexplicable health problems try eliminating some of the worst offenders from your diet for a while. Wheat, soy and dairy are some of the common foods that cause mystery illnesses.

  1. Drink water. This one step, if practiced many times each day, can revolutionize your health.

Finally, remember this. There is evidence that we are not sick because we’re fat, we’re fat because we’re sick. Fat is a symptom. Treating symptoms doesn’t work. It only masks the problems.

The accumulation of fat can be the body’s way of defending itself from toxins. Those toxins can be emotional, from food or from industrial chemicals.

Therefore the goal to “lose weight” is off track. When we strive for optimum health the body will detoxify itself, heal itself and we achieve our goals.

We’ve been riding the wrong ride!

I am happy to point you in the direction of many good resources if you decide to stay off the diet roller coaster forever. Feel free to contact me.

Rah! Rah! RAW! Updated July 2013

rawfoodRaw Food, that is.

Incorporating more raw food into your diet is one of the best moves you can make towards optimum health. It’s not necessary to toss out your stove to enjoy the benefits of eating raw foods, simply add more of them to each meal.

Why raw?

Raw food is “living food”. As opposed to dead foods, (anything that is processed and/or cooked), living foods still have their enzymes intact. Enzymes are catalysts for every function of the body from blinking to breathing.

Cooking also destroys food’s naturally occurring vitamins and strips away most antioxidants. (One exception is that cooked tomatoes have more lycopene, a nutrient known to prevent prostate cancer, than raw tomatoes). Our bodies were designed to eat primarily raw foods and many of our modern diseases can be controlled or eliminated with a raw food diet.

I first became aware of the benefits of eating living foods about 30 years ago. When planning the “real estate” of my plate, I strive to ensure at least 2/3 is plant based and of that, at least half is raw. Lately I’ve worked at increasing the ratio of raw to cooked foods based on the miracles eating raw has brought to others.

A few years ago a friend of mine lost his sister to cancer. A cleaner in the hospital where his sister breathed her last breathe had gotten acquainted with the family over the course of her illness and suggested that her cancer could have been prevented with a raw food diet. My friend was intrigued and bought the book the woman had recommended. He began eating raw and within about two weeks he noticed his asthma was gone. He no longer needed medication that he had taken nearly his entire life, over 50 years.

There are many cases of diabetes retreating from a raw food diet. Drew Carey of the Price is Right has reportedly cured his diabetes and lost significant pounds by eating raw.  Mike Adams, founder of the web site Natural News (which has over 100 raw food articles) cured his pre-diabetic condition by eating a diet that is 60 to 90% raw. Unfortunately, most doctors believe diabetes is incurable and must be treated with expensive medications.

One of my daughters has struggled with her weight since she was a teenager, despite working out religiously and eating “healthy”. When she began eating a primarily raw food diet she miraculously went from a size 12 to a six and for the first time in years, her stomach doesn’t hurt whenever she eats. She reports having more energy and even though it takes some extra effort to seek raw food, she vows she will never go back.

The main benefits of eating raw include:

#1 More energy. The body spends less energy digesting food and the aforementioned enzymes are not destroyed, adding to one’s vitality.

#2 Elimination is drastically improved on a raw diet. A properly functioning digestive system is vital to maintaining optimal health.

#3 More time: it takes less time to prepare raw food (once you know some of the tricks) and people on raw food diets often report that they require less sleep.

#4 Weight loss: 82.5% of people who switched to raw food diets reported losing weight.

#5 Mental Health: 87.5% of raw “foodies” report improved mental health in areas such as optimism, memory, focus, patience, and even creativity, without the dreadful side effects of anti-depressants

#6 Lowered cardiovascular disease, including lowered cholesterol and triglycerides.  C-reactive protein, an inflammatory molecule linked to heart disease, diabetes and other chronic disease is also lowered with raw food.

#7 Improved menstrual cycles; stress reduction, reduced breast and prostate cancers.

Studies show that cooked foods increase our white blood cell activity, essentially meaning our bodies see cooked food as invaders. This explains why many “dis-eases” can be treated by switching to a raw food diet.

It’s not difficult to increase your raw food consumption. An easy way is to eat fruit for breakfast.  My favourite breakfast is a sliced banana or two with some berries and/or a sliced peach with a splash of coconut milk. If you eat enough fruit, it will get you through the morning. Fruit is also a good snack anytime of day.

Another great way to increase your raw food intake is to eat salads. They don’t have to be the standard lettuce and tomato salad. You can literally turn any veggies into a satisfying meal. I invented a salad a couple years ago that is a summer favourite of mine and it has no lettuce in it at all.  See Nasturtium Salad.

Raw foods can also be added to cooked foods. A baked potato can be topped with any number of chopped raw veggies, including cabbage, broccoli, onions, and/or tomatoes.

I have attended a number of raw food workshops given by Afke Zonderland and sponsored by a local health food store, Amaranth Whole Foods Market. Afke is a marvelous woman who showed us how to make Walnut-Zucchini Crackers and some fabulous dairy-free dips.

She made a sweet potato and celery soup with cooked sweet potatoes and served it warm. I liked that she wasn’t a raw food “purist”: she argued that after a day on the ski hill she didn’t want to eat something cold and that the idea is to eat as many raw foods as possible but not be militant about it.

Afke is all about spreading the message of healthy eating. She has dozens of recipes on her website at www.foodsalive.ca. Not all her recipes are completely raw but they all incorporate some raw elements, which is really the point. She also recommended David Wolfe’s book Superfoods. His web site is www.DavidWolfe.com. I have included more resources below.

I encourage you to take small steps towards incorporating more living food into your diet. By eating less dead food, you are sure to enjoy some of the benefits without having to diet (aka, “suffer”!

Rah! Rah! Raw!

Sources:

www.NaturalNews.com has dozens of Articles on raw food including: http://www.NaturalNews.com/z030137_lifestyle_health.html

http://altmedicine.about.com/od/pop…

http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content…

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/diabetes/…

http://www.iowasource.com/food/lenk…

http://www.google.com search Raw Food for tons more resources.