How to Think Thin Blog

Processed foods are the primary cause of the obesity epidemic, but very few diet experts or nutrition counselors recognize how much the changes in our food supply have contributed to this national disaster.

We all tend to forget that obesity, heart disease and cancer are modern illnesses, and our doctors forget it as often as everyone else. Just 100 years ago, these illnesses were still rare. There were very few processed foods back then, just the newly affordable white sugar from Caribbean sugar cane plantations, and milled white flour.

Before these foods became available, the ‘diseases of civilization’ were almost completely unknown.

Before World War II, Weston A Price, one of our first nutritional anthropologists, found no obesity, no heart disease and no diabetes among traditional (he called them ‘primitive’) people eating ancestral diets .

Missionary doctors like Albert Schweitzer who served isolated traditional communities found the same thing - no obesity, no diabetes, no heart disease. None.

Whenever sugar and other refined carbohydrates are added to the diet, these diseases will appear. Because of the rising per-capita consumption of sugar in the United States, 13% of Americans were obese by 1960.

Then the corporate-owned factory farm took over, which took away the fat-fighting elements in milk, meat, butter and cheese that had previously helped our bodies fight the dangerous effects of refined sugars and starch.

In just 44 years, by 2004, the percentage of obese Americans had increased to 32% - and over 66% of Americans are now either overweight or obese. The rise in childhood obesity and diabetes is particularly frightening.

While we were changing the way our foods were raised, we were also forgetting the traditional food preparation methods that our great-grandparents used every day to protect the natural goodness of the family’s food.

These traditional preparation methods were particularly important when it comes to grains. Grains, (and all other seeds), have special compounds inside them that inhibit digestion. That’s why seeds can be eaten by birds and bears, who then ‘plant’ the seeds far away from the mother plant. In order for us to use the vitamins and minerals in grains, we need to eliminate the ‘anti-nutrients’ in the seeds.

When these traditional preparation methods are not used, anti-nutrient elements found in grains can cause calcium and other minerals to be poorly absorbed. Calcium has been shown to be vital for weight loss as well as helping us maintain the health of our bones and teeth.

Fortunately, more and more people worldwide are moving back to real foods, which is what many people are now calling whole foods grown as nature intended, and cooked in traditional ways to make the best use of their natural goodness. People are finding that eating food grown by family farmers can be more nutritious than store-bought food, and can even promote natural weight loss.

If you’re tired of trying to lose weight by eating smaller portions of the same foods that made you fat in the first place, you should consider joining the real food movement.

You’ll kiss your calorie-counter goodbye when you replace the industrial foods in your pantry with real foods, grown by farmers who care as much about the health and well-being of their animals and crops as you care about the health of your family.

Whole foods grown naturally, with nothing removed and nothing added, will give you the fat-fighting elements you can’t find on supermarket shelves.

And if whole foods are served to your family, you’ll know that your children will never be part of the growing epidemic of childhood-onset diabetes, one of the most biggest health threats facing our nation today.

I’ve created a brand-new ebook that will teach you everything you need to know to use natural, whole foods for both weight loss and health. You can find out more at my new website at CravingControlDiet.com

Do you try hard to fix healthy lunches to take to work, but end up eating those frozen meals from the grocery store because you don’t have time to fix anything better?

I put together a little video to show everyone how easy it is to add some nutrition to an otherwise boring lunch. It isn’t fancy by any means, and could hardly be called a “lunch recipe” or anything like that - but it will add fiber and nutrition that most packaged meals leave out.

It will also add so much actual food, (while adding only a few calories) that it makes it easy to pass by that candy machine on your way back to your desk.
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I’ve just put up two new articles on my main website that I think are going to be extremely popular. The first is a comprehensive, no-holds-barred review of the Internet’s top 10 diets. If you have read any of my other articles or books on weight loss, you won’t be surprised that my highest recommendations do not go to the diet at the top of the list. I tell you why in my article. Click here to read all 10 reviews.

The second article, which I just finished a few minutes ago, gives you a safer alternative to the Master Cleanse Program, or “Lemonade diet”, that is so popular right now - mostly because of some celebrity publicity. When I was doing those reviews of the most popular online diets I found that this somewhat dubious”diet,” (it’s really a purge, not a diet), was at position #4.

There’s a much easier and safer way to clean out your colon, and I explain it in full in my new article. Click here for my new article on colon cleansing.

I’ve just added an article that talks about the emotional forces that cause us to overeat on Thanksgiving and other family holidays. Read Emotional Eating on Holidays - Why Thanksgiving and Christmas are a Dieter’s Nightmare

Do you have any ideas that might help others get through the holidays without adding 5 or 10 pounds to their weight? If so, please share them with us.

Is true long-term weight loss really possible?

We’ve all heard those statistics that say most people who lose weight will gain most of it back again in a very short amount of time. Those numbers can be discouraging, because losing a significant amount of weight is hard work, and it takes a huge commitment.

If you get help from a weight loss clinic or doctor specializing in obesity, the process can be expensive, too. How can you know if you’ll be one of the “biggest losers” who manages win the long-term weight loss battle?

The National Weight Control Registry (NWCR) has the resources to actually study this issue, and their findings are important clues to the odds of losing weight and keeping it off. They have the voluntary participation of over 4,000 members who have lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off for at least one year.

The greatest value of this program is that they study the successes as much as they study the failures, so they are learning what works as well as what doesn’t. Continue Reading »