Health

Health – it’s only smart to be healthy

A healthy body starts with healthy thoughts. We can see how our own body responds to the life style we give it. For example, too much stress can cause weight gain because of the release of the hormone, cortisol. Stress can also cause weight loss because of a nervous stomach. Listen to your body.

Exercise may be a walk or a marathon, or seem like a marathon attempt. Computers have brought new physical and mental strain that can create poor posture, muscle tension, carpal tunnel syndrome, etc. Often, we are too tired to do anything more than cooking dinner, housework, kids, spouses, hobbies, etc. We always seem to compromise one thing for another and that’s where we need to prioritize or we just agonize. The catch-22 here is that exercise gives us energy, reduces tension, clears the mind, but we’re too tired to do it.

Easy-to-do exercising

• Simple stretches and neck rolls throughout the day will help release some muscle tension
• For the totally lazy person, even using a rocking chair will give some benefit, especially if you engage the lower abdominal muscles
• A simple little Twister-sizer that you can keep under the coffee table and twist to your heart’s content whenever you want is still better than nothing
• Exercise balls are quite beneficial and wearing ankle and wrist weights will help build strength, too
• The Ab-Lounger makes you feel as if you’re exercising just by sitting in it and you can watch TV while exercising without undue strain on the body
• The latest best workout friend is the Playstation MOVE, Nintendo, Wii and Xbox Kinect ­– get one if you can
• Walking is still the best form of exercise and walking on the spot is a good start if you really don’t want to go outside
• Anything that gets your body moving that involves energy work, like Donna Eden’s Energy Routine or Rudy Hunter’s Healing Calls

Personally, I’m a walker…I love walking and hiking…and want it every day. I don’t care what I look like when I walk; I’m just being me at that time and enjoying what my body can do. I also have Nordic poles when my back is sore to relieve some of the spinal compression and prevent another herniated disc.

The proper way to walk: Pull your body forward with every step…do not push your body by pushing your feet against the ground. You will create better posture and use your muscles properly.

Proper eating habits

Two obstacles to proper eating habits need proper attention:

1. Grief: is a unique process that affects everyone in a different way and cannot be ignored. Take the time to grieve a loss so that you do not bury it and have to deal with it later.
2. Food allergies: cause weight gain and usually we have strong cravings for what we are allergic to.

The way you eat has a huge effect on how well that food is digested which directly affects how your body assimilates it. Here are a few ways to avoid indigestion and gas:

• Never eat standing up
• Do not load the fork until the last mouth-full is swallowed
• Always entirely swallow a mouthful before taking another, i.e., don’t have part of a mouthful lingering at the back of the throat when taking the next bite
• Do not wash a mouth full of food down with liquids; sip liquids between swallows of food
• Do not inhale while drinking liquids and do not slurp soup as you tend to swallow air at the same time; if something is too hot to drink, wait until it cools down
• Do not smoke while eating
• Do not work while eating
• Do not talk while eating – it’s also gross to look at
• Eating in front of the TV is a poor habit as it doesn’t allow us to enjoy our food and we often eat faster than when sitting at the table. The thing is that it’s so common that it’s even more important that other good eating habits come automatically.

Diet Sense

The notion to lose weight can come from something as simple as an innocent remark, such as, “Haven’t you put on a couple of pounds?” Depending on your personality, there’s a whole new life issue that you hadn’t explored yet, and for some sensitive personalities, it’s a dangerous place to go. Skinny people deal with weight issues, too, only in a different way.

When you get the idea that you want to lose weight you should answer as to:

1. Why do you want to lose weight?
2. Do you have any negative influences from others that could sabotage your efforts?
3. Are you keeping weight on as a way of protecting your feelings?
4. Is your life de-stressed enough to take on the demands of a weight loss project?

Always make a realistic plan coming from positive energy.

Do you really have a weight ‘problem’?

If you really think you have a weight ‘problem’, which is more of weight ‘issue’, then you probably think that you are mild to moderately beyond your ideal weight.

You will need to get to the root of what caused it, because if you use a restricted diet to lose the excess, you will be going back to that same situation when the restricted diet is over. You may also have a new problem of guilt over the failure of the weight loss program.

• Drink lots of water to help flush toxins from your system and prevent dehydration.
• One way that calories are expelled from your body is through your lungs, so even mild exercise will help.
• Do a very light loofah brushing over your body to stimulate the lymphatic system and move toxins that cause cellulite to be processed out.

A good weight loss trick is to find a picture of yourself that shows you closer to your goal weight and keep it in sight. When you look at it you will see yourself where you would like to be and your subconscious will take care of the rest. Make sure you connect with inner joy when you look at it.

If you really want to try a new way to diet, consider the one where you eat foods that take more calories to digest than they give you, and they are chalk full of nutrition. Those foods are fruits (apples, melons, etc) and veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, etc). I first saw this in 1980 in an Australian magazine and now the concept is here again and it won’t make your body crazy.

If you desperately want to try a restricted diet, try for a week at a time and listen to the changes that your body tells you.

From the moment you decide to is when you start/stop losing weight.

My rule of thumb

To eat so that I get the most nutrition out of the smallest amount of calories, which reduces my eating time and leaves more time for other things, i.e., spinach instead of lettuce in salads. I eat raw fruit and veggies, organic where possible, as they have more nutrition and last longer. Also, a variety of flavours (i.e., meat marinade) keeps my palette satisfied. I never add sugar or salt to my food and only use sea salt in cooking.

When it comes to supplements, I take a good anti-oxidant daily like grape seed extract to counteract the free radicals from certain foodstuffs and pollution. I also take Spirulina (blue-green algae), which is a total food. Occasionally I take a good multi-vitamin when I feel the need for it. It took me years to find my balance, because of the many changes in lifestyle and eating habits. It all came down to something that I already knew intellectually, but I had to lose the obsession with weight and retrain myself.

Today, I am very healthy and I can eat whatever I want. Although, I have never been overweight, per se, my long time problem with weight was in fact a self-image problem.

The dieting dilemma

There is no accounting for poor eating habits! If you feel that you must go on a restricted diet, remember that they bring their own plate of problems to the table. A healthy diet is a lifestyle where you pay attention to what you put into your body. When you hear of a new restrictive diet, you need to compare it to your regular eating habits and see if it’s just someone else telling you the same thing in a new way.

For example, the low-carb diet of today, is making money because people are still not listening to the fact that most foods are high in refined sugar which makes for an overly high carbohydrate diet in and of itself.

When you look at a healthy diet’s balance between the body’s need for carbohydrates, fat, and proteins, you will see that refined sugar is not there either (refined sugar takes nutrients from your body and gives none). If you look deeper into nutrition, you will learn that there are the unhealthy simple carbohydrates (sugar, sucrose) and the healthy complex carbohydrates (grains, vegetables). Our bodies need the complex carbohydrates for what they bring to the table.

Example

– a testimonial on the Dr Atkins Diet Revolution of 1978:

I followed the diet meticulously, including making the “egg muffins”. I lost weight, but after not too long I started feeling lethargic. I had also lost interest in my life and felt uncomfortable in my body. One month, I noticed that my period was lasting longer than normal, it was still flowing heavy after two weeks. So, I went to the doctor and he said that I was deficient in vitamins, especially P and K, which help to coagulate bleeding. I told him the diet I was on and he said that my body had gone too far into a state of ketosis where I was losing muscle and not fat any more.

 

I decided to go off the diet and then my hormones started going crazy with weird food cravings. That went on until a time that I was losing 1 to 2 pounds a day for a while. Then all of a sudden, I was gaining that amount per day.

 

I started to fear food, so I got a prescription for amphetamines to counter any sense of appetite. Then I went to a naturopath who started fasting and cleansing diets. I remember phoning him in a panic one morning because I had gained 1/4 of a pound. Between the amphetamine instance and the naturopathic shock to my system I developed bulimia. Later in the journey I reached the ultimate with anorexia. Thus was a struggle with myself over weight that lasted for years including a self-imposed no-fat diet and it’s problems.

Research shows that the initial weight loss in this diet is water and you can lose 5 lbs of water just by cutting salt out of your diet. When considering fad diets, do your homework.

You may find is that some ailments or residues of illness have made themselves at home in your body during the course of your abuse of your health. Diseases or cancers may have also been started and now those too can be healed by your newly created healthy cells.

Excerpt from ‘Charges’ on loving your body

Let it drift away…to come back, see it anew. The dimples and crevices, they belong to you. It is a friend not to be ignored. Talk to it as such…let it respond…it is not a fight. There should be no enemies to battle. See potential…see love in its being. As a puppy, training will start as awareness increases in time.

This is the line that you do not want to cross.

Bulimia

An eating disorder where you feel guilty after you eat and cause yourself to vomit until all the food is brought back up. The hydrochloric acid from your stomach also destroys the protective enamel on your teeth and then you have dental problems, too. Vomiting also causes an electrolyte imbalance in your system and your hormones can get out of whack. Socially, it’s brings a type of paranoia to the entertainment scene.

Anorexia

An eating disorder where you become obsessively afraid of food and every bit of it becomes your enemy. Eating a piece of steak or a yogurt cone can cause your belly to swell up. Your body goes into a different kind of ketosis. When your body loses too much fat, you lose your period. Besides always seeing only the fat on your body, your brain distorts other aspects of your life, too. The other thing about being too skinny, for me it was 118lbs at 5’9″, is that your body hurts most of the time