1. How much food am I allowed to eat?
2. Do I need to weight my food for the rest of my life?
1. Count Calories
i. I find counting calories to be unnatural, tedious, potentially misleading and devoid of the true essence of how we were meant to fuel our bodies. Calories are a scientific measurement of heat-energy which has been loosely tied to food. Besides it being difficult to monitor the calories of every single piece of food you eat; most of the unprocessed foods, like fresh produce, that we should be consuming don’t fit into a convenient calorie calculator. Moreover, not all calories are created equal, which often leads to confusion. For example, eating 100 calories worth of banana is going to give you a lot more banana than 100 calories of a candy bar. The banana, which is packed with nutrients, will also do a better job of staving off hunger than the candy bar. Visually, however, the portion of banana will look larger than the portion of the candy bar because the candy bar is much more calorically dense. Finally, notice that I had to compare a whole food (the banana) to chemically manufactured processed for (the candy bar). Counting calories really doesn't make much sense when comparing too modestly portioned unprocessed whole foods. Both will contribute to proper nutrition in their own way. There is no need to view either through a bad vs good paradigm. Simply put, when was the last time the chef at your family cookout asked you if you wanted 500 calories worth of ribs or 750?
2. Listen to Your Body
i. While this is a bit more natural, the problem is that you body also listens to you. If you continuously give your body large portions it begins to tell you that it requires large portions and vice verse. Think about it as if a company were to give all their employees a 10% raise each year. The employees will begin to expect the annual 10% pay increase. Do you think they will eagerly give up the annual raise? Of course not. It is the same way with your body. Your body initially doesn’t want to give up the large portions. However, unlike the employee/owner relationship, you and your body are on the same team. There is no conflict of interest. Once the normal more healthy portions start to make your body feel better; it will begin telling you to lay off the super-sized meals. It will do this in the only way it knows how; fatigue, gas, belching and of course weight gain (along with all the risk factors that come with it).
3. Trust Your Eyes:
i. Using your eyes to visually prepare a healthy portion of food is by far the most natural way for individuals to monitor the portion size of their meals. The problem in America is that we have been conditioned by Big Food to view normal healthy portion sizes as too small. This phenomenon reminds me of people who automatically add salt to a meal before they even taste it. It also reminds me of a time not so long ago when I would order a meal based solely on maximizing the volume per dollar. I used to ask the servers, “How filling is this entre”; that was restaurant code for, “I am looking for that dish that will have me staggering out of your establishment having suffered from food comatose.” During the first 60 days of healthy living you will calibrate your eyes so that it begins to recognize what a normal portion should look like. Understanding what a normal portion size looks like does not mean that you never over-indulge. It means that you understand and enjoy those occasions when you over-indulge.
4. Weight Your Meals
i. Weight is the cousin of your eyes. Weight is also a universal standard unit of measurement that everybody understands. Weighing your food for 60 days serves as the boot camp for the long term goal of Trusting Your Eyes. In short, commit to weighing your food for 60 days. Afterwards your eyes will guide you to correct portion sizes.
3. Which foods am I not allowed to have?
4. Do I need to weigh my food even when eating at a restaurant?
5. What if I need to frequently eat out because of my job?
I find this routine easier than hesitantly sticking my foot into the water, feeling the cool water and then slowly climbing into the pool. Simply put, because I have become so familiar with the pool environment, there is no mystique making it easy for me to make all the necessary preparations before I reach the pool. If only swam every once in a while the environment would strongly influence how well and how long I swam.
The same should be true for people who have jobs which require them to eat at restaurants regularly. The regularity of the experience should remove most of the experience’s luster and allure from your mind. This should allow you to implement one or two Affirmative Habits in order to rationally prepare for your meal.
Again, these suggestions are not for the people who enjoy a nice restaurant as an occasional treat.
6. Why are sugary drinks prohibited; and don’t healthy people drink sugary drinks especially juice?
7. What about corn on the cob or bread?
8. I am not overweight. Do I need to observe the Five Rules?
9. What about Diet Soda? It has no sugar and little calories?
According to the Mayo clinic, studies show that people who drink sugary drinks whether diet or regular are at a higher risk of obesity. I think this correlation results from people thinking that they can “game” the reality of health and nutrition. I am sure you have seen people like that. They order Big Mac meal at McDonalds along with a diet soda.
10. Doctors recommend a minimum of 30 minutes moderate-intensity physical activity, five days a week, but this is higher than the 20 minutes of exercise four days a week recommendation in the Five Rules?
If I asked you to do 30 minutes of exercise five days a week would you stick to it? If so, get started.
For the rest, the Five Rules for Healthy Living is the first chapter in your personal journey of improved health and nutrition. You should start slow and build. If a 20 minute walk is too much, drop the time down to a level that you feel comfortable. The most important thing is that you are active, which could be as simple as walking, no less than four days per week.
Also, I want to dispel the myth perpetrated by Big Fitness that you need to endure a Rocky Balboa-style P90-X workout in order to be healthy. You just need to get consistently active. Over time during the Self Discovery process you will naturally begin to increase your activity. Trust me.
11. I don’t like vegetables. What should I do?
Red Auerbach, legendary coach of the Boston Celtics once said, "You can't teach height".
The same can be said about your desire to be healthy.
One thing that Big Food has done relatively well is expand access to a variety of fruits and vegetables. Walk down the aisle of almost any grocery store’s produce section and you will be surrounded by nearly one hundred different fruit and vegetable varieties.
Not to be overlooked, the frozen food section also has a bountiful selection of out-of-season and in-season fruits and vegetables at a fraction of the cost.
Big Food and Big Box Retail have also developed several products, such as the microwave, the slow cooker, the steamer, the indoor grill, the mini convection oven and the pressure cooker which have masterfully enabled the novice cook to reduce cooking times from hours to minutes.
Video sharing sites like Youtube and Videojug offer five minute cooking tutorials for any dish imaginable.
While I have told you that you can prepare the vegetables any way that you like them, I can’t make you explore a few vegetables until you find a few that you enjoy. I can’t force you to noticeably infuse a few vegetables into your favorite dishes. You have to decide to be healthy on your own or it won't work.
The Five Rules of Healthy Living is not a diet in the tradition sense. It is merely the realization of the five core habits that healthy people regularly observe. Therefore they are constant.
The intent is for you to implement these habits into your daily routine. There is however, no scorecard or set timetable.
Ironically, the fact that you recognize that you have “fallen off the wagon”, indicates that you have not actually “fallen off the wagon”.
Healthy people understand when they overindulge and accept it an enjoyable part of life. This is in contrast to unhealthy who unknowingly overindulge every day at places like their work cafeteria, the Bo ‘Jangles breakfast drive-in and countless vending machines.
Unhealthy people tend to only count the occasions when they grossly over eat, but fail to realize that the daily intake of processed food-like chemical concoctions are indeed what is making them obese; not the occasional splurge.
You now understand this concept; so it is impossible for you to “fall off the wagon”.
Yes and no. You are not to drink any sugary drinks for the next 60 days. I define sugary drinks as drinks where sugar or artificial sweeteners have already been added or drinks which are created by extracting sugar from a food source (including 100% fruit juice).
Not included are drinks which have no sugar. To that end, just like cooking any recipe, you are allowed to add sugar and other spices to taste.
I know the so-called experts hate this advice, but I know that through the Self-discovery process you will begin to reduce your sugar intake and find a number of all around healthier alternatives to refined sugar and chemical sweeteners.
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