Obese people trying to lose weight make often two fundamental mistakes:
- First - Dieting for only a period of time during which only low-calorie foods are consumed. (In fact, the word "diet" means in Greek "lifestyle", not a period of time.)
- Second - Trying to lose as many pounds as possible in a short time.
There is no quick way – if we have been gaining weight for some years, it has to take time (two to three months) to turn this process around and set our body on the weight-reduction course.
Victor Hugo said that people couldn’t achieve what they do not understand. To apply this rule to obesity, we cannot lose weight unless we understand what leads us to obesity.
Bad habits that lead people to obesity
Please pay close attention to the following list of bad habits that are largely responsible for leading people to obesity and try to eliminate these habits from your everyday life. You will be pleasantly surprised by the results. Only your name will remind you of the obese person you once were.
- The habit of eating fast and not chewing the food well causes poor digestion and the formation of fat layers in our body. Chew each bite at least fifty times – chewing is not a very demanding activity.
- Drinking fluids at meals causes irregularities in the functioning of your digestive and hormonal systems. When you drink at meals, even water makes you fat. Drink at least twenty minutes before a meal or one to one and a half hours after a meal.
- Eating sweet baked goods causes the absorbing walls of your digestive tract to be plugged up by starch and promotes the production of excess amounts of mucus in our body. Moreover, sweets promote weight gain. It is better to treat yourself to dried fruits, seeds (sunflower, pumpkin), and moderate amounts of nuts.
- The habit of frequent snacking or constant chewing puts to much stress on certain systems in our body and takes them away from other important activities. As soon as anything gets into our mouth, the tongue (acting as the taste organ) sends a signal to our brain and immediately many mechanisms are engaged. Among them, just in case, is our body’s defense mechanism (the tongue does not provide full information about what it is that entered the mouth). Leukocytes have to leave their task of cleaning up and curing the body and they quickly gather around the stomach, where the content from the mouth is soon expected. When it is determined that no danger exists and leukocytes are not needed, they go back to their abandoned tasks. If there is another portion of food soon after, the whole process is repeated. As a result of being constantly overworked, leukocytes cannot do a good job at defending our body. This is why people who are used to frequent snacking are the first to get ill when there is, for example, a flu epidemic. Another problem created by constant snacking is the weakening of digestive enzymes produced by our body. Weaker enzymes mean incomplete digestion and the production of fat instead of water and carbon dioxide (by the way, chewing gum produces the same negative results).
- Incorrect combining of food products makes digestion difficult and weakens the digestive mechanisms, because different foods need different digestive enzymes. Incorrect combining causes some food to putrefy and some to be turned into fat.
- Lying down after meals activates mechanisms that normally function in sleep and takes the focus away from digestion. Undigested food is turned into fat. If possible do some walking on your heels after a meal to increase blood supply to the stomach and to improve digestion.
- Sitting lifestyle does not use much energy and our body does not have the opportunity to use up its fat deposits. We should perform at least 1000 different energetic movements a day to increase the energy use.
- The habit of eating while watching TV takes away the intimacy of our meals. Ancient dieticians advised that we should be "deaf and mute" at our meals. If we eat while watching TV, our brain gets confused – it has to process the information coming from the screen and to direct the digestive process at the same time. This interferes with our digestion and causes overeating.
- Eating while irritated is another bad habit that causes us to forget moderation. Never eat under stress! Our liver reacts to stress first and the bile tubes become narrow. Bile does not get to our small intestine and food is not digested.
- Eating before bedtime or at night is harmful because in sleep, all processes in our body are directed towards the rebuilding of cells and the rejuvenation of our entire body. The digestive organs do not have the necessary energy to process food at night. Eating at night gives us nothing but fat, liver stones, and kidney stones.
- The habit of eating mostly refined and cooked food products makes us deficient in natural vitamins and microelements. We only get empty calories from these products; they do not have much nutritional value. Even if we eat large amounts, we still feel hungry and want to eat more. This way we end up eating five to ten times more than we should.
When we lose the ability to properly process and absorb the food we eat, our body starts storing fat around our hips, thighs, belly, neck, etc. The psychological causes are more complicated. Most importantly, we have to understand that obesity is a disease and there is no excuse for tolerating it.
It takes four steps to lose weight: Read more on page 57
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Did you know? - Obesity is still on the rise.
Results from the 1999-2000 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), using measured heights and weights, indicate that an estimated 64 percent of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese. The number is at the highest level ever recorded.
- 31%, or about 59 million adults older than 20, are obese. Obese is defined as 30 or more pounds over a healthy body weight; overweight is roughly 10 to 30 pounds over a healthy weight.
- 33% of adult women are obese, compared with 28% of men.
- 50% of black women are obese compared with 40% of Mexican-American women and 30% of white women. (The survey doesn't have a category for all Hispanics.) There is virtually no difference in obesity among men based on race.
- About 15% of children ages 6 to 19, or about 9 million children, are overweight.