Thursday, September 18, 2014

No More Diets!

Working out plays a tremendous role in fulfilling those health related goals, but there's an old saying, "You can't outrun your fork." A true healthy lifestyle consists of proper nutrition, as well as regular exercise.
This is where many people think, "Uh-oh. That means I have to go on a diet, doesn't it?"
Please don't. In fact, can we abolish the word, "dieting," once and for all?
Temporarily starving your body is one of the worst things you can do, both for weight loss, and for overall health. Crash diets never focus on the root issue. Slashing your calorie intake, and giving up certain foods for 30 days may result in temporary loss. Still, one of two things are likely to happen. Either you'll find yourself giving into cravings during the program, or at the end of it you'll go right back to the behavior that made you diet in the first place.
There's a better way. Whether you want to lose weight, or bulk up on muscle, the key to success is making lifelong changes that promote the body you want. To that end, here are three ways you can begin practice healthier eating today.
1. Make Incremental Changes
What if I told you that today you had to give up all sodas (diet or otherwise,) limit your consumption of all grains, cut out liquid calories, only eat meat that is grass fed, and for goodness sake- stay away from sugar? Oh, and you'll be skipping desserts, passing on the chips, staying away from processed foods, and so on. And so forth.
Admit it. You'd look for a different to blog to read, wouldn't you?
Depending on your goals, and individual needs, those would be great nutrition choices. But, if you actually tried to make all these changes at once, chances are at some point you'd fall off the wagon.
Incremental changes are easier than drastic ones.
So what if I asked you to make one healthy change today? Then make another one next week. And another the next. You'd be much more likely to succeed.
So look at this list, pick a change, and start it today. Congratulations. You're already improving your health.
2. Eat Real Food
If you're already looking to eat better, then hopefully you're reading nutrition labels on food. Even without changing anything about your lifestyle, being aware of ingredients is a fantastic start.
It doesn't matter yet if you don't know the difference between High Fructose Corn Syrup and Maltodextrin, here's a general rule. The less ingredients, the better.
As you make those incremental changes in step 1, be moving towards eating less processed, and more real foods. Real food includes meats, fruits, vegetables, nuts, eggs and so forth.
Eating this way gives your body the protein, nutrients and good fats that it needs, regardless of your overall health goals. Just as importantly, it limits the things present in so much of the food industry that destroy your goals, such as artificial ingredients, refined grains, carcinogens and sugar. Speaking of which...
3. Limit Sugar
Sugar is addictive. After all, it tastes great. Not only that, it sets off a chemical reaction in the body that ultimately leads to pleasure. When we eat sugar, the pancreas releases insulin to regulate it. That balance is hard to match though, which leads to too much insulin. That results in a sugar crash.
How does the body react to this crash? It wants more sugar.
Here's the issue with that. The body uses sugar to do two things- for energy, and to store fat. In excess amounts, all the body can do is use it for fat.
This leads to a swarm of health issues including obesity, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.
Limiting your sugar intake will help you make great strides towards true health. This is where reading nutrition labels comes in handy, because the food industry hides it's amount of sugar by wording it several ways. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but sugar can also be listed as High-Fructose corn syrup, Glucose, Maltose and Lactose.
Another way to quickly check is to read the amount of sugar grams on the nutrition label.
There you have three easy ways to begin a healthy lifestyle, not one of which includes dieting. Eating healthy may include lowering your calorie intake, but it never means starving. 

Keep transforming. Keep regenerating.


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