The last diet you will ever need... and it's free.
It seems like everytime you turn around these days, there is a new fad diet being hyped on social media, internet advertisements, or TV that promises instant results, many times due to some new miracle compound or a recently discovered magic super food. I'm sure you know the old adage that I heard my grandmother say many times: "If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is". Unfortunately, the vast majority of those diets are not much more than a scam and some can even be detrimental to your health, especially if used for long durations of time. The really great news is, the secret to weight loss, long term weight management, lots of energy, and a long happy and healthy life is infinitely more simple than even these fad diets claim. The first step to this process is getting rid of "diets" as most people know them. The reason why most diets fail is because the people using them are under the false impression that radically changing their diet for a week or a month will permanently fix their issues, only to return to their previous habits and previous problems, sometimes even regressing further than where they started. The answer here is to stop "dieting" and clearly understand that the word "diet" simply means "the sum of food consumed by a person". Your diet shouldn't be viewed as a weight loss plan, it should be viewed as giving your body healthy fuel to run as you were designed. If you do that, the weight loss will come with little effort. Healthier foods typically are less calorie dense than junk food which means you will stay full without the excess calories that quickly cause weight gain. The second step for most people is understanding that nearly every single person on the planet "loves to eat" and really has an emotional attachment to certain foods that might not be viewed as 100% healthy... and that's ok. It's really ok to enjoy eating certain foods that you love, you simply need to acknowledge those foods, understand why you like them, and realize that you are the one that decides what to eat, when to eat, and how much to eat. It really boils down to a handful of simple decisions each day. When those few decisions come up, simply acknowledge them and make more good choices than bad ones. Just think for a moment about how valuable your body is. You only get one to last you your entire life. It is capable of extraordinary things and even modern science is still discovering how it all works. It is easily capable of generating a million dollars or more worth of services, ideas, and work over that lifetime. To put this into perspective, if you went out today and spent a million dollars on a race horse, what would you feed it? Would you load it down with a constant stream of junk food, sugar, and overly processed foods? Probably not. You would want it to run as close to 100% as possible and feeding it the proper food would be the obvious decision. So why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we almost purposefully get in our own way? Again, it simply boils down to a few good choices and staying out of our own way. The third and final step, is educating yourself on what foods your body was designed to run on. For the vast majority of people, this doesn't require the purchase of lots of exotic foods and supplements. There are really just a few simple rules. First, eat as many vegetables as you want/can, especially ones that are green and leafy. Second, eat sensible portions of lean proteins, like chicken, turkey, fish, lean pork, lean beef, etc. As a general rule, make sure the portion size is no bigger than the palm of your hand. Third, and extremely important, limit your intake of grains, especially refined grains like white breads and pasta. They are detrimental to your health. Grains and also dairy should really only be consumed in condiment sizes, as in small additions to your meal, not the focus or base of it. Lastly, your choice of sweeteners is very important. An increasing amount of sugar consumption has rapidly degraded the health of the United States as a whole and has caused obesity and type 2 diabetes to become labeled as epidemics. Let's be honest with each other, the majority of the time, obesity and type 2 diabetes are self induced health problems that can be corrected by simply following these steps. In addition, artificial sweeteners like the ones in the blue, pink, and yellow packets are synthetic chemicals that react with the body to make your tongue think it's sweet. Unfortunately, they don't trick the brain and usually cause the brain to to seek out other sources of calories and sweetness. This is why several recent studies have found that people who drink two diet sodas a day are 500 times more likely to weigh more and have a larger waistline than those that avoid it. The good alternative here is to use a good stevia sweetener available at nearly every grocery and health food store.
So that's really all there is to it, three simple steps that all revolve around making a few better decisions each day. All you have to do to get started towards a better you, is to take the first step.
