Nice Figure, What's Your Secret?

I frequently get people commenting how lucky I am to have a nice figure.  But luck has absolutely nothing to do with it.  I wasn't always slim or healthy.  I'm capable of gaining weight and health complaints as easily as the next person, but consciously and deliberately I make lifestyle choices to avoid these symptoms.

Yes, you heard me right - obesity is a symptom.  Most commonly - a symptom of eating the wrong kinds of food.  In short - processed food.  

Processed food is poisonous.  Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Weight-Gain & Processed Food

Weight gain is one of the most prevalent effects of processed food consumption.  But you don't need me to tell this... just have a look around.  

Many people don't understand the difference between processed food and real food, and that's the biggest problem to start with.  The difference is: real food is natural, in its whole and unaltered state, complete with all its nutrition in-tact.  Processed food has been interfered with, bits extracted, bits added, and usually contains an abundance of sugar and artificial ingredients.  They add bulk, they add flavour, and they have a carefully engineered bliss point... which is designed to make you crave more and more and more...

Before mass-production and consumption of processed food, obesity wasn't a major issue.  The bellies you'd see were more of the 'beer-belly' variety rather than the 'who-ate-all-the-pies' kind.  

But the weight itself isn't even the worst part... weight-gain is indicative that something is wrong on the inside.  Our bodies aren't coping with what we're putting them through.  The thing is - you don't even have to over-eat to gain weight, and you can be obese and malnourished simultaneously.  Many of us come from cultures that recommend we avoid fat because they say it makes us fat.  So we buy all these 'diet' and 'low fat' alternatives, which have much of the natural goodness and beneficial fats removed, and they put sugar and flavourings in its place. 

An enduring healthy weight isn't achieved by 'going on a diet' every so often or other temporary approaches, but only through permanent changes to our lifestyles that ensure our bodies remain in good working order as well as looking good.  Yes you can lose quite a bit of weight eating nothing but cabbage soup for 6 months, but what happens after the diet is up?  How do you keep the weight off?  You can't eat cabbage soup forever!

These 'Weight-Watchers' and 'Slimming World' and other courses are very popular, but I wouldn't recommended them, not even if I was paid to.  Their branded products are filled with sugar and artificial ingredients, and the recipes they hand out call for ingredients such as 'diet orange soda' for the curry, or 'diet coke' to marinate your chicken in.  Oh my goodness.  My mouth literally hung open the day I looked into what these slimming clubs entail.

My 4-Step Method for Health and Healing - I Am The Proof That It Works!

This is a tried-and-tested approach my friends, and my UK size 6-8 figure and very good health is testament to that!  You can read about my 4-step approach here; it's a short post but worth a wee nosey.
 

In summary: I printed out a list of all harmful ingredients to avoid, and threw out anything containing these ingredients or sugar, no matter how tasty.  For the next few weeks I took my list to the supermarket, and time-consuming through it was I diligently checked every item until I became confident in recognising harmful ingredients and what products/brands were now off-limit.  Within 6 months I no longer had IBS symptoms, and my fibromayalgia symptoms were massively (and permanently) reduced.  Through the combination of natural diet and daily exercise I lost 3 stone within 5 months.  In total I lost 5 stone over the course of a year... and have kept it off easily ever since.  From Hippo to Gazelle in no time at all! 

From this, nearly 13 stone and looking rather chunky (March 2016)...

To this... 8.5 stone and much lighter in body and spirit! (August 2017)...

Without the vital knowledge of how to shop for our health we can very quickly end up overloaded with toxins, malnourished, suffering internal damage due to chemical reactions, malfunction of organs and systems, and before long we're presenting with worrying symptoms and we have no idea what's happening to us.  There are many, many symptoms of processed food poisoning, and the thing is... we're all allergic to processed food.  We're not supposed to eat it!

Self-discipline is required when switching from processed to real food, especially at first because sugar and many of the artificial ingredients are highly addictive.  Similar to tobacco addiction you can't expect to just stop and be ok immediately.... no, you'll likely experience mad cravings (that are hard to resist), but after only a week perhaps the cravings will be gone, I promise.  So it's easier than giving up smoking, which I can attest to -  I quit smoking 3 years ago and still dream of tobacco,  but I never dream about sugar or Happy Meals!

Forget the Gym, Just Use Your Legs!
 

As well as attention to diet, a good balance of exercise and rest is needed in order to maintain an effective metabolism.  As lives get busier there's temptation to drive instead of walk, to socialise instead of resting, to cut back on sleep to fit more into our days.  

In my observation, trying to schedule trips to the gym is not only unrealistic for people who are already super busy, but often causes issues around self-consciousness.  The most realistic option is good old fashioned walking, and fitting as much of that as possible into your daily life.  Basically - every time we move we spend energy, so get moving!
 

Personally I don't drive but I like to live in the countryside, so I have no choice but to walk far far far!  I've deliberately never learnt to drive so I'm always forced to walk.  I like it though, and I'm perfectly willing to walk one, two or more miles to the nearest shop or to get to work.  I take the stairs instead of the lift or escalator.  I take a rucksack to the shop and carry my groceries home.  All this exercise I would miss out on if I had a car, the luxury of convenience.  Not that there's anything wrong with having a car, don't get me wrong, but the amount of people I've known over the years who drive to the corner-shop and then try to make time for the gym later... um... what else can I say but – duh!!!
 

If our lifestyles take into account a good balance of exercise, then we don't need to make time for the gym.   And anyway, these 'boxy' approaches to achieving good health can often seem like impossible expectations/demands/requirements and many of us shrug, sigh and resign ourselves that we simply can't change a thing about out already busy days.
 

An Obvious Truth...
 

The thing is, it's not rocket-science, it's actually really obvious, hillariously obvious, once you're aware of it.  Then you wonder how you were ever so blind to the facts.  Our bodies can't handle poison, and if we put poison in, eventually we get sick.  Like putting the wrong kind of fuel in a car, it will break down at some point.  Not surprisingly we begin to experience adverse reactions to the poisons, as our bodies are unable to deal with them they start to let us know by presenting us with symptoms.  Often they're so common we don't think for a second they might be related to what we just ate.  Headaches, fatigue, diarrhea, aches and pains, irritability, insomnia.  Then after a while we might get more severe symptoms, indicative that something is seriously wrong, and we begin to pay attention, fearing something terrible, fearing the dreaded big C.     
 

It's no secret that governments and corporations and even so-called 'health services' deliberately give out phoney info.  Therefore it's crucial we do our own research – comparing information from several sources to get the full picture and truth behind it – rather than merely accepting the information we're given through education or health systems.  It's no secret that powerful people can be very good at deception – they put a lot of time and money into concealing truth, but truth is available if we can be bothered to look for it.    

To help us out, we have a whole community of enthusiastic health foodies right here on Steemit!  Check out this link to see what tips and recipes are being shared daily... all 100% natural and healthy for your benefit, and mine too.

Many of us have been eating the wrong food for too long.  Now it's time to eat to heal, which we do every time we choose to...

Initiated by...

(Shared with kind permission of @kiwideb - and you can too!)