Are you sick and tired of dieting? I’ve written before on the dieting industry and how it’s failed us. It’s failed you. Have you noticed how many thousands of weight loss programs our country has to offer, but yet we also have the highest obesity rate, too? Our system is broken and in desperate need of repair. Think back to the number of diet plans you’ve tried throughout your lifetime, but here you are. Again.
The National Institutes of Health offers up some pretty overwhelming numbers.
Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity
- More than two-thirds (68.8 percent) of adults are considered to be overweight or obese.
- More than one-third (35.7 percent) of adults are considered to be obese.
- More than 1 in 20 (6.3 percent) have extreme obesity.
Will the vicious dieting cycle ever stop? It’s time to stop the madness. Can we just live healthy? It sounds easy enough right? So why is it so dang hard? What does it mean to live healthy anyway?
I’m determined to make healthy living a priority — I only have one body and it’s my job to take care of it to the best of my ability. I’m on a mission to fight the obesity crisis and help stop the madness and make healthy living a do-able, realistic priority for you, too.
Here are some things you can do to make healthy living a lifestyle.
At some point we have stop calling it dieting and get serious about changing our mindset. Our “diet” is literally how we eat everyday so in a sense we all diet everyday…for example a doctor may ask, “what does your diet consist of?” Btw, how would you answer that. Anyway….
I’ve also said it several times before and I’ll continue to say it: If there is a healthy section in the grocery store, then what is the other {practically the entire store} section called? Get it? So we have to start thinking differently about food and how it effects our body. Does it provide nourishment, fuel, energy, and so on? If not, what are the other alternatives?
We have to think about ourselves differently and food differently. We must care enough about ourselves to care about the food we feed ourselves.
We have to stop the extremes and the trendy fads and get back to the basics of eating real food and start a new trend of making healthier choices until they become a habit.
One of my client’s recently texted me,
“I would say I’ve created 2 great habits – veggies for breakfast and lunch.”
Ya’ll, that’s huge! That’s exactly what it’s all about: making better choices, creating healthier habits instead of short-term wonky stuff, ya know?
Now, for some specifics on how to do that:
Watch your sugar intake. More and more studies are linking the consumption of excess sugar to not just diabetes anymore, but also inflammatory diseases, heart disease, high blood pressure and cancer.
Limit not only obvious sugars like fruit juices, sodas, junk, etc. but also watch your consumption of white foods. (Notice I only said limit. I mean who wants to totally live without some of this stuff forever! Hola!) Think of white bread as powdered sugar. Yep, it causes a really quick sugar spike in the bloodstream, causing an insulin release just as quickly which causes a whirlwind of other reactions throughout the body, including fat storage and and along with altering your body’s pH. You can read more here about the effects of sugar in our body and tips to help you break your sugar habit.
Consider adding vitamins and supplements to your daily routine. If you are one who has a consistent diet of 8-10 servings of green veggies, fruits, fiber and lean protein everyday, you are one of the few who may not need to supplement everyday. But we all know that most of us are too busy to give that much thought to our everyday nutrition. We try, but it’s just hard to hit the mark sometimes…. so therefore we supplement.
Supplementation is meant to enhance –or fill in the gaps of what you may be missing from your diet. Also the RDA or Recommended Daily Allowance suggested by the FDA is simply the minimum amounts to prevent actual vitamin deficiencies…not to reach optimal wellness. And I’m not satisfied with just the minimum….I prefer optimal wellness!
These are a couple of the vitamins I take (Like I can’t live without these!):
- Isotonix MultivitaminRegardless of how well we do try to eat, our food source and soil is just not the same as it was fifty years ago when our great grandparents were growing their own food. It’s sad to say that most of our food ‘crops’ come from a temperature-controlled warehouse and ‘enriched’ with protein additives, preservatives and growth hormones.When choosing a good multivitamin, it’s critically important that you read the labels–not necessarily the vitamin amounts and percentages, but the actual ingredient list itself. There are way too many vitamins on the market today that contain hydrogenated oils, trans fat, harmful food coloring additives and synthetic binders and fillers. I prefer Isotonix vitamins because of their quick absorption and natural ingredients. Because they are absorbed into the bloodstream so quickly, you’ll feel the benefits that much quicker too!
- Isotonix OPC
OPC contains a powerful anti-oxidant called Pycnogenol. Dr. Oz talks about Pycnogenol in one of his episodes for ‘younger looking skin’. Other benefits may include decrease inflammation (for quicker muscle recovery), reduce blood pressure and cholesterol and boost the immune system. Studies have shown OPCs to be up to 20 times more powerful than vitamin C and 50 times more powerful than vitamin E in neutralizing free radicals.Think about how quickly rust spreads. A similar process (cell death > aging, etc.) happens in our own bodies as a normal process of aging and from other environmental factors. I like to think of a antioxidant as slowing down that rusting process to keep our immune system up and slow down that aging process a bit.
Exercise. For optimal wellness we need a good mix of cardio such as walking, biking or swimming and resistance based exercises. While cardio is necessary for heart health and building endurance, it simply isn’t enough. As we age, our estrogen level decreases causing our bones to become more brittle. Workouts that focus on strength and resistance builds and strengthens your bones and lessens your risk of breaks. Resistance focused exercising is one of the number one ways to strengthen your bones!
Not only does that low estrogen increase our risk of bone breaks, but it also causes that excess fat storage around our middle and muscle loss! I know right! Weight training builds muscle which fuels our metabolism which results in fat burn! So weight training also helps to burn off that extra belly fat, too.
Some great exercises that focus on resistance are simple bodyweight only moves such as push ups, plank, squats and lunges for a start. You can find demos of these exercises also on my youtube channel.
You can also find a great beginner bodyweight only workout here.
Please share this post if you find the information helpful or if someone you know needs to hear it! 🙂
I’d also love to hear your own tips of how you make healthy living a lifestyle!