You brush your teeth every day, or at least we hope you do… You get dressed, put on your shoes, comb your hair, etc. These things are all extremely small tasks to maintain your outward appearance and you do them every day and you’ve done them your entire life. This is what we call a routine. Now I’m going to ask a lot of questions and even though I can’t hear your answers, I know what you’ll say. Do you brush your teeth the same way? Do you put your left shoe on your left foot and your right shoe on your right foot? Do you put your pants on one leg at a time? So why is it that when you want to start getting into shape you look for the toughest workout program, the most extreme diet and buy a whole bunch of weight loss products, vitamins and supplements? Are you going to do these things every single day for the rest of your life just like all the things you have done for as long as you can remember to maintain your appearance?
Getting into shape is SIMPLE, but simple doesn’t sell. In 30 minutes I can teach you everything you need to know but you have to show up. At least every other day, lift a few weights and work your heart every day. Take at least one day of rest each week. We live in an automated world now so these things are necessary. Make better food choices. Don’t eat ‘fat-free’, ‘sugar-free’, low fat or any other food that comes out of a box. Don’t go to buildings that push food-like substances out of a window while you’re still in your car. Eat as we did before 1954. It’s really that simple. It’s not about calories…It’s not about burning calories…It’s about energy. Food is energy. You need to eat even if you did NOTHING but lay in bed all day. If you add activity you need to add calories or food that is designed to give you energy for that activity. You can’t burn calories that are already stored as fat if you do not even bring in enough calories to support your internal bodily functions.
How many times do I have to keep telling people this before they will listen? Losing weight through exercising and cutting way back on their nutritious calories is why the deconditioned population in America keeps getting heavier and heavier. When you starve your body of the daily calories it needs your body panics and enters a survival mode where it scavenges every calorie that comes in. A lot of those calories are stored as fat to be used as energy later on when another starvation cycle occurs. This is a big reason why fad diets or yo-yo dieting results in 5 pounds lost and 10 pounds gained. Our bodies require energy (read: calories) every day, and if someone combines a fad diet with the latest high-intensity workout craze, they are most likely starving for energy and their body begins hoarding all calories for survival through the fad diet, leading to undesired results and oftentimes weight gain.
Our obesity epidemic is getting worse and our food quality is getting worse. If heavy people are trying to use exercise to lose weight and they are NOT eating enough high-quality foods and adding vitamins and supplements, the only weight they are going to lose is muscle tissue. Someone who is not an avid exerciser only has their natural muscle tissue. They don’t have any available to lose, so when they lose it they are ruining their bodies from being able to lose weight naturally through nutrition and moderate activity – after all, our muscles are the fat-burning machines in our bodies.
The fitness industry is the single most contributing factor to all the misinformation and confusion about how to lose weight. So just Keep It Simple…Stupid. Start off slowly, make better food choices, go visit a nutritionist or dietician and make a commitment to something that you will NEVER stop doing. Make a lifestyle change with the nutritious foods you eat – for a diet is temporary, but long term proper healthy food intake can reward you with decades of wellness and vitality. And that’s all I have to say about that.
Stay healthy my friends…