Three years ago, I was fat. Not fat all over. I was what they call "skinny fat" -- a body that resembled a python after swallowing a goat.
My wife had a repertoire. She'd ask me when my baby was due. She'd subtly sing the Winnie the Pooh theme song.
And she'd tell me about this legendary place called "the gym." If I went there, maybe I wouldn't get winded playing hide and seek with my kids.
I ignored her. Then came a freak case of tropical pneumonia, a three-day hospital stay, and a now-urgent plea from my wife: "I don't want to be a widow in my 40s."
Thus kicked off a two-year quest to remake my body, a journey I chronicled in my new book Drop Dead Healthy. As with my other books, The Year of Living Biblically and The Know-It-All, I pledged to become the world's greatest expert in a field I knew nothing about.
My goal? To test out every diet and exercise regimen on planet earth and figure out which work best. I sweated, I cooked, I learned to pole dance. In the end, I lost weight, lowered my cholesterol and doubled my energy level. I feel better than I ever have. (Though I know that just typing that will mean I'll come down with rickets tomorrow.)
The project ended a few months ago, but I've kept dozens of the strategies I found most helpful. Here, a sampling.
For more by AJ Jacobs, click here.
For more on weight loss, click here.
Naomi Mdudu: The Career Of Dieting
I also recommend limiting high glycemic carbohydrates, especially from grains. That's because when you consume them and have insulin resistance from consuming too much fructose, your brain is subjected to toxic magnified glucose spikes. Over time these glucose spikes can lead to a condition called "Sugar-Brain". The formal medical term for this condition is Carbohydrate Associated Reversible Brain syndrome or CARB syndrome. Because the brain plays a key role in auto-regulating fat stores, people with CARB syndrome will start to store extra fat at any caloric intake even as they lose weight from dieting. That's because they are losing mainly lean body mass, not fat.
If you want to maintain normal brain function and body composition, limit your intake of sugar, HFCS and high glycemic carbohydrates.
This is first and formost. Anything else is simply
a gimmic. Take magnesiun chloride and b-complex.
Esential Amino acids have to be part of the diet
or supliment also.
No long chain fatty acid oils is essential to prevent damage.
Do these things first, then maybe take some other advice
in addition to that. Anything any doctor or anything anyone else
tells you is a gimmic propeganda to keep you sick and line their
pockets. I dare you to do it and then tell me any different.
Wow, I just got the 411 on this the other day. It is more important than most know.
Great Advice! More need to know this.
The rest if good too.
:)Gigi
Faved Friend
Allow yourself to be human. If I felt deprived, I would quit so I made sure that I had chocolate everyday. I also allowed myself a "free meal" a week. That didn't mean that I gorged myself. I would still pay attention to portion size but I let myself have whatever I was craving no matter how unhealthy. I also forgave myself if I messed up so I could start over without guilt.
Finally, I do better on a routine. I have a routine for exercise, and for my weekday breakfast and lunch. They are not exactly the same everyday but I don't have to think too much about it. I am a working mother with two kids so the less I have to think, the more likely I will do it.
However, I think that it is different for everybody. Take the advice that works for you and don't worry about the rest of it.
I realize it's just an anecdote, but I had a friend who was skinny, in great shape, a marathon runner, ate well, in his early sixties: he went running one day and at the end when he was changing his shoes, his dropped dead.
Advice should not necessarily be the same for everyone.
So, if you want to find the healthiest person alive - it's easy, you just need to measure healthiness. And until we learn to measure healthiness effectively - all claims to be or become the healthiest person alive are just bunk.
Can we measure healthiness? If you think you can't, you can't. If you think you can, you can come up with a measurement that we can discuss. When many people think we can, we may have many measurements to discuss. Over time, we can refine these measurements, learn to weight them appropriately, and create useful summary measurements.
Health flows from our genetics, our nutrition, our cells, our tissues, our organs, systems, bodies, minds, spirits and communities. Each of them has many components, and each component has many health measurements. When we learn to measure health, we will take a huge step past simple assumptions and statements like the above to very specific recommendations. What is eat well? Sleep well? What exercise is most healthy for my body? etc.
http://personalhealthfreedom.blogspot.ca/2011/12/scientific-measurement-of-healthiness.html
tracy