|
Weighing the Options
By: ChaChanna Simpson
The other day it hit me. I am getting older and I won't look this good for the rest of my life if I don't start exercising and eating right. In my family, as it might be in many families, we have a history of diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure. It just occurred to me the other day that I don't want to have those problems plaguing me when I get older. Like most of the world, originally, I wanted to lose weight so that I could wear those low-rise jeans and two-
piece bikinis and look stunning in them, not having my flab hang over all sides of the jeans. Yuck! I have respect enough not to offend the general public.
The first step in getting healthy is eating healthy. You can exercise all you want, but if you are still shoveling donuts, fast food and every kind of dessert you can think of in your mouth, it kind of defeats the purpose. So, to help me on my quest for healthy eating, I enlisted the help of The Diet Center, in Darien, CT.
The first thing people do when they are planning to lose weight is go on a diet. Just to clarify, diet is, "the manner in which people eat. It teaches people how to eat and make healthy choices," according Melissa Arnold, Director of Fitness at the Diet Center. It is not depriving yourself of carbohydrates or some other important nutrient your body needs. When you cut them out "the body tries to get that nutrient from something else. If you change or stop eating something you will lose weight but you are setting your body off balance and that is not healthy," says Arnold. Your body needs all of its nutrients. Unless you are going to swear off a particular food or food group for the rest of your life, as soon as you eat it again you will most likely gain the weight right back. Then you are right back to square one, plus more weight and you are all depressed about it.
The way to go is optimal nutrition which is "the balance of healthy foods and whatever is needed to keep your body in balance. It is different for everyone because it depends on your lifestyle, illness, genetics and where you live," says Lisa French, Fitness Consultant at The Diet Center. It is important for people in our twenties to begin taking care of our bodies now because the more [you] are "aware of what [you] should be doing then the aging process can be a lot kinder," says Arnold. Eating all the proper nutrients brings the body into balance and helps you age gracefully, giving your body what it needs in order to function properly.
As for those diet pills and such, Arnold says that because they are not FDA approved, what is on the outside label doesn't have to be what is really inside the bottle. So who knows what you are really ingesting into your system.
Another misconception is that if you skip meals you will lose weight. That is absolutely false. When you are starving yourself and thinking that you are doing something good, your body goes into survival mode. The next time you eat, your body will hold on to the food because it is not sure when it is going to get fed again. The Diet Center suggests that you eat small meals throughout the day, so that you will keep up your blood sugar and have enough energy to get through the day. Also, make sure that you drink eight glasses of water. Water will give you a full feeling and it cleans and replenishes your cells.
This is just an introduction to nutrition to get you all started on the proper way to nourish your body. Don't forget to incorporate fitness. It works hand and hand with nutrition. You have to burn the fuel that you are putting in your body.
About the Author
ChaChanna Simpson is the publisher and editor of Twentity.com, the free ezine for twentysomethings, featuring cheap and free events every Wednesday. Subscribe today at www.twentity.com
email this
page
Return to
Nutrition and Supplement Index
Haven't found what you were looking for?
Try this search:
Free Email
List Reveals health,
fitness and wellness tips - secrets and information - delivered
directly to your inbox
How to Benefit from the Mind-Body Connection
(excerpt)
You are about to gain insight into the
mind-body connection. The number of
people who truly understand these principles on our
planet are relatively few.
There is an undeniable connection between our minds and
bodies, you can learn to use this fact to your benefit.
Dr. Bernie Siegel, author of "Love, Medicine and
Miracles" was once a distraught cancer surgeon until he
began to understand the greater principles of the mind-
body connection. He felt dragged down by the artificial
barriers that existed between patient and doctor, and the
helplessness he often felt as a result of his inability
to effectively serve those patients. Eventually, those
barriers were disintegrated by Dr. Siegel's recognition
and growing understanding of the mind-body connection and
how it could serve his patients and himself.
Dr. Siegel, or Bernie as he began to have his patients
refer to him, had some
startling realizations as a cancer surgeon. He found that
there were actually
quite a few people in the world that successfully beat
the statistics on cancer
survival. He began to recognize that a patient's ability
to defeat something as
serious as cancer had to do with the patient's mind and
attitude about their
disease.
If you would like to see the rest of
this article, please go here:
http://www.tobeinformed.com/repository/mind-body.html
copyright 2004 - David Snape
|
|
