It’s amazing to see that even with all of the extraordinary modern technological advancements we have access to, old-school conventional wisdom still has a strangle hold on the nutrition and weight loss advice of today. The way we communicate, do business, experience entertainment, and even travel have vastly improved and made life a lot easier and more convenient. However, when it comes to losing weight and changing our health’s destiny, few things have changed over the last fifty years.
The standard weight loss advice in our society has always revolved around eating less and exercising more, and most mainstream diet programs have built their foundations and empires around this philosophy. The problem is that this method is not only misleading, it’s also metabolically unhealthy and highly ineffective.
As we continue to listen to outdated thinking, it’s clearly evident that our approach has completely missed the mark. The fact is that more people are dieting and exercising today than at any other time in history. So why are we getting fatter and sicker as a result rather than getting leaner and healthier?
It’s because weight loss isn’t as clear-cut as eating less and exercising more. That’s why when I hear things like a “calorie is a calorie” or “calories in vs. calories out”, I shrug and shake my head knowing that the human body is much more complicated than a simple mathematical equation.
The human body is an amazing and complex biological factory. Every time you consume a food, your body is evaluating that food as either good or bad, nutritionally supportive or hormonally disruptive. It comes down to basic biology — not math. Will those calories let your body do what it’s designed to do automatically by stabilizing harmonious hormone balance, or will they throw your body into hormonal havoc? The truth is that the difference between 200 calories of protein and 200 calories of refined carbohydrates isn’t zero. It’s immeasurable. The right calories are the most important part of the “eating equation”.
If we eat nutritiously-dense, quality calories that support our body and create harmonious hormonal balance, then focusing on the quantity of those calories becomes a non-issue. Our body will then be able to do its job automatically, optimally regulating blood sugars, energy balance, stress, mood, satiety, and cognitive function.
However, if we eat low quality, low nutrient-based foods, we disrupt hormonal balance, and we will eventually have to start manually controlling, often through the use of medication, what our bodies are supposed to do automatically.
The vast majority of our population today has succumbed to this phenomenon. As the obesity rate has more than doubled over the last three decades, our chronic disease rate has mirrored its rise.
Today:
- Over a billion people around the world suffer from diabetes and obesity.
- One in three deaths each year among middle aged Americans occurs due to excess body weight.
- Over 500,000 Americans die of heart attacks yearly.
- One-third of the entire American population suffers from high blood pressure, contributing to nearly 800 thousand strokes annually.
- Depression is now the leading cause of disability, which currently affects more than 120 million people worldwide.
And if these numbers aren’t disturbing enough to raise your eyebrows, then how about this startling fact: For the first time in history the life expectancy of the future generation is estimated to be ten years shorter than that of those reading this article today. That’s right, folks! For the first time in recorded history our life expectancy is actually starting to decline.
It is clear, by simply looking around us, that the dieting advice we’ve been following for nearly the last five decades has been inaccurate. It simply hasn’t worked! The fact is that the “eat less, exercise more” and “count and control calories” to lose weight approach that most of us follow has only a 4.6 percent success rate. That means that 95.4 percent of all the people who try this fail. To put this in better perspective, that’s a higher failure rate than trying to quit drugs, alcohol, or smoking cold turkey. And a majority of this misfortune is due to one major factor: people don’t understand why they gain weight.
If people were to final understand the actually “cause” of gain weight, then losing it would be much more comprehendible, and, for the first time, attainable. Without understanding the cause, a solution seems out of reach because it’s a lot like driving down the highway in the middle of the night with your headlights out trying to find an unknown destination. However, when we understand the “cause”, the solution makes perfect sense, and the road to success becomes clear.
The Missing Secret!
Most of us still believe that weight gain is a repercussion of eating too much food. And although it seems quite logical to assume that eating too many calories would equate to weight gain, especially because it’s been so deeply ingrained in us by nearly every diet plan and health professional for the last fifty years, it’s not exactly an accurate analysis. You see, the human body is a pretty elaborate machine with many checks and balances already put into place, which automatically control energy balance, even in times of food over-load.
So, why is it that people continue to gain weight even though many of us believe we are eating healthy, while an even higher percentage of us are consciously watching and counting how many calories we eat?
The answer may surprise you…
Simply put, weight gain is a triggered response to eating foods that cause us to have more sugar in our bloodstream than the body is capable of using. The faster those calories enter our bloodstream and raise our blood sugar level, the quicker our body will convert those calories into body fat. It’s not a matter of how many calories we consume vs. how many we burn. It’s a matter of what those calories are doing to our body, hormonally.
BAM!
This is undoubtedly one of the most profound and important passages you will ever read when it comes to losing weight and improving your health. Read it over and over again until you completely understand its context, for therein lies the secret to simple, sustained, and permanent weight loss, automatically, without dieting.
