An Intro To What I Like To Call... The All Natural Diet
[7 Days To Permanent Weight Loss - Day 6]
In lesson 1 we dispelled the common myths about weight loss and worked out some ground rules for achieving permanent weight loss. The key point there was how the "cardinal equation" was the center of all weight-loss diets, and the factors that made a difference to the equation - it is those factors that have been discussed through the series.
* In lesson 2 we discussed the social evolution of our eating habits, along with the impact on our metabolisms. Learning how our metabolism is affected through our eating habits, and especially how these habits are not anything new but instead a part of our social evolution is critical to understanding how you can reverse the process.
* In lesson 3 we charted out strategies for reversing the "damage" caused to our metabolisms by evolution. This involved learning the simple strategies that you could use to change your eating habits and supercharge your metabolism.
* In lessons 4 I told you about the "natural diet" mindset and how you would use that to understand what made you overweight.
* In lesson 5 we discussed the diets you could adopt immediately to get back to your natural weight. Now that you've followed the process from the beginning to the end, you'll be more informed and thus in a better state of mind to implement the "natural eating plan" that I've provided for you. The natural diet mindset is the focal point of the 7 Days to Permanent Weight Loss system (and I'm sure I've said this somewhere before) - it provides you with the right tools to understand how your metabolism works, and how you can make simple changes in your eating habits and your diet so that your body works with you (and not against you) when you want to lose weight.
In the second half of this lesson, I'll discuss the two most common topics weight watchers ask me questions about: dieting and exercise.
Crash diets suck - the life out of you!
Amusing (or not so amusing) headlines apart, dieting as a whole should be discredited for one simple reason - it doesn't work.
But wait, isn't the "7 Days to Permanent Weight Loss" a "dieting" program as well?
No. Actually, while the name may sound like it, the foundations of building a "natural" diet lie in a greater, long-term process that involves building a healthier lifestyle. Everything presented in this course, and all the materials and information that you will receive later on in this article series, will be within that paradigm.
So the question now is: What's the difference between "diets" and the "natural" diet?
Diets, be it Atkins (very successful, but bankrupt), Weight Watchers, or the hair-brained banana diet (which requires you to eat nothing but bananas for the duration of the diet) are all working with a faulty outlook on weight loss and the human body. Diets are usually all about creating an artificial impact on your current weight in order to help you reach your current weight and the weight that you desire.
In contrast, the "natural" diet is about returning your body to its natural weight - as I talked about in the fourth lesson ("What Makes You Fat?"), humans are not naturally overweight. Even allowing for genetic differences that shape our body structures and metabolisms, the basic truth is that weight problems are generally NOT natural - instead, they are artificial products of a set of damaging eating habits.
What IS natural is what you'd call your ideal body weight - one that would be specific to you according to your height, age, gender and body structure (while also allowing for genetics as well). A natural diet, the essence of the 7 Days to Permanent Weight Loss system, focuses on returning your body to its natural weight by teaching you how to remove the damaging programming of your metabolism caused by social evolution and by showing you what to eat (in order to lose weight AND to maintain a healthy life).
Exercise - The Elusive Magic Pill?
The most common excuse I have heard for someone being overweight (why do people make excuses about this anyway?) is that they don't find the time to exercise. If they could just walk an hour everyday, or find 30 minutes from their hectic routine to do cardio or workout 15 minutes every morning… the common ground in all this is that people seem to attach an extraordinary value to exercise - as if it would be the cure for all their weight problems.
Exercise is necessary for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. But where losing weight is concerned, it is not a requirement. In fact, exercise would be the "last" resort that I would recommend if you wanted to lose weight (even if you happened to be morbidly obese and were over-weight by 400-500 pounds) - not because it isn't helpful, but because being overweight has its roots in far greater problems than just a lack of physical activity. Exercise can hide those problems and help you lose weight quickly, but unless you make the fundamental changes in your diet and work on reversing the "damage" to your metabolism, exercise will just be a band-aid and not the solution.
I discussed in detail in the first lesson of how exercise was not the answer to being overweight - I'll end the discussion here by asking you to exercise for your health, because your health is very important.
But if you want to lose weight, forget exercise and focus on fixing your eating habits AND your metabolism.
Revisit the "Natural Diet" Mindset
Before I end, I'd like to remind you of three core principles that have been the theme of this series. These are an essential part of the "Natural Diet" mindset, and in all the fuss about what you should and should not be eating they tend to get a bit lost.
One - You need to change your lifestyle permanently to produce permanent results. There's no point in even trying to change the way you eat if you don't understand how people really get over-weight, and why losing weight is a long-term commitment. And speaking of long-term…
Two - Focus on the long-term gains instead of going for short-term results that may backfire on you. You may want to use crash-diets and exercise to reduce your weight, but unless you fix the basic problems that caused you to gain weight in the first place, you'll always be a "weight-bomb" waiting to explode the second you stop your dieting or your exercise.
Three - Remember that your eating habits should be flexible enough to fit in with your daily routine - this program is designed exactly with that in mind, giving you a general framework and then allow you to fill in the gaps yourself by working it in your lifestyle.
Tomorrow, in the final lesson of "this" series, I'll give you a simple action plan that you can print out and use immediately towards achieving permanent weight through a natural diet, with or without exercise.
All the best,
Brad Callen
Health and Fitness Consultant
http://www.dietplannerplus.com/
