Don’t Diet, Don’t Gain Weight, Enjoy Health
The advice is common and frequent when it comes to losing weight. Some people tell you to cut calories, others to cut out carbohydrates, and others to cut off the fat. Perhaps, some suggest, we should fast for one day every week, skip breakfast, or simply exercise more. The problem is that many of the suggestions actually cause us to gain weight or they simply do not work.
How to Avoid Gaining Weight
There are a few important ideas to remember:
1. The weight gain from eating one meal, or the weight loss from one trip to the bathroom are not real gains or losses. These are just short term changes which are not maintained. When sugar is stored as fat - that is weight gain. When fat is removed from fat cells and ‘burned’ - that is weight loss. Adding muscle mass also increases the weight, but it looks good, is healthy for you, and because muscle burns fat, it helps prevent weight gain from fat.
2. The bottom line is this: when our body makes the hormone insulin, we store sugar as fat. The more insulin we make, the more fat we store. When we do not have insulin present in our blood, and our blood sugar drops, we make another hormone called glucagon, which unloads our fat cells. The more time we spend with insulin, the more we gain. Without insulin we are able to lose fat.
3. Avoiding bad carbs (carbohydrates) to prevent the production of insulin and fat gain is defititely helpful. Bad carbs include sugars and starches. Even complex carbohydrate sources, such as whole grains and fruits have the ability to raise blood sugar levels. To keep the blood sugar from rising too high, make sure there is a balance with protein, fiber, water, and even good fats to slow the blood sugar rise.
4. Avoid artificial sweeteners. Why? Because artificial aweeteners such as aspartame and sucralose cause us to overeat. We think we are fooling our body with the sweet taste, but somehow the brain seems to miss the calories it expected from the sweet detectors on the tongue. The brain increases our hunger. Most people increase calorie intake by 30% with daily use of these sweeteners.
5. Drink a glass of water 5 to 10 minutes before eating a meal. In addition, a bowl of healthy soup or a glass of tomato or V8 juice (low sodium) eaten before other foods can help reduce hunger. Never begin a meal with sugary sodas, starchy breads, or alcoholic drinks. Make your first bites (after the soup) those with high proteins or high fiber vegetables.
Healthy Living
If you choose to live healthfully, it will normally prevent, or at least slow, weight gain. It is important to review the 12 Keys to health. Following these keys will enhance living as well as helping to maintain great health.
Exercise, rest, relaxation, and mental exercise are all critical for good health. They also are important for preventing weight gain.
Two features of healthy eating need to be mentioned here:
1. The greater the variety of foods that are eaten, the healthier you will be. Eating the Rainbow is important, eat many different colored foods each and every day. Eating a large variety of foods, rather than a large amount of a few foods is much more likely to provide the nutritional spectrum needed for great health. An example of variety might be to eat one Brazil nut every day for the selenium, about a day’s recommended amount, and a lowering of prostrate cancer risk.
2. Overeating needs to be avoided, though very rare meals with over-indulgence are not likely to create a problem. One of the main problems of overeating is that it provides a great number of calories to the blood (and then the fat cells), but it provides little nutrition from the vitamins and minterals in the food. Overeating pushes the food through the intestines too quickly for proper digestion of the some of the good nutrients. The large mass of food also makes it difficult for the extremely minute levels of vitamins and minterals to actually make contact with the intestinal membranes to be absorbed. So unless you overeat with ONLY highly nutritious foods, you are not likely to obtain the proper levels of good nutrients in the blood.
Making Good Choices
Life is filled with choices. We often ignore them, choosing to let things happen to us or be pushed along by the crowd. The results are never going to be what we would have really wanted. So make a choice. Choose to do what is right. And do so often.
Good choices move us toward our goals. Those goals should be enjoying health, being fit, and living through all the years of our life. Do not forget that health is a choice. It is hundreds of choices made each and every day.
In the same way, making many ‘easy,’ ‘a little bit more won’t hurt,’ and ‘it doesn’t matter any more’ choices destroys our deeper desires. Our goals. We end up with regrets, too often lying in a hospital bed.
If we truly loved our spouses, children, grandchildren, and our God - we would not allow our health to decline, our bodies to become obese, to succumb to Type II Diabetes, or our brain to become demented. It is a matter of choice. Hundreds of choices every day.
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