The first step toward any goal is a desire to reach it. Health and wellness can be a gift, but most often is something you need to obtain, often with considerable effort.
It is very difficult to reach any goal without an understanding of how to get there. Present day marketing would have you believe that there are hundreds of different ways. Judging from the increasingly alarming statistics of our obesity epidemic, it is obvious that what we are doing is not working.
There is beginning to be a consensus that improvement in our obesity epidemic will not happen until individuals take personal responsibility for their health and make the right lifestyle choices. It is not something that others can do to you or for you. It is necessary for you to make fat loss a goal - a destination. If you have the wrong directions, it is unlikely that you will reach your destination. Previous attempts at fat loss, and failures to do so, was probably because you were given the wrong information. Do not trust the advice from corporations trying to sell their products. The USDA Dietary Guidelines have been a 30-year failure. Forget about them!
Recognize that nutrition is a science. One of the basic rules in physics is that if you continue to consume more calories than you burn up, you will become fatter.
Recognize the role that the metabolic syndrome - or insulin resistance - plays in obesity. Insulin resistance comes from eating too many carbohydrates - usually - that cause your blood sugar to rise rapidly. Because high blood sugar is harmful, the body produces insulin to bring our sugar down to a normal range. It is common to eat foods that demand that your body produce insulin all of the time. This leads to a chronically elevated insulin level, which is also toxic to your cells. The accumulation of these toxicities causes illnesses grouped as the metabolic syndrome.
Recognize that our bodies need healthy saturated fats. You have probably been told (Dietary Guidelines for Americans) that saturated fats should not exceed 10%. This is wrong and unhealthy! Good fats can be 30 to 40% of your diet. We need good fats for strong cell walls, to build hormones, and to burn as energy. Carbohydrates are easier to burn and the body uses them when they are always around. Actually the fat is 'locked in the fat cells' by the high insulin levels in our body. The only way to unlock this fat is to decrease your insulin level, which can be done with low glycemic food choices and exercise. You really have to eat fat to burn it. It takes about 3 weeks to 'teach' your body to become a fat burner instead of a sugar burner.
Avoid processed foods because of the excess vegetable oils, high glycemic products, soy products, and excitotoxins.
The book "Eat Fat Lose Fat" by Mary Enig and Sally Fallon is one of the best resources I know of to fully explain these concepts.
Walther Meyer MD., CMD.
Nutrimed@tds.net
