Why Diets don't Work

Why Diets don't Work
With so many diets and weight loss products available
today, you would think that obesity and weight related
problems would be a thing of the past. However the fact
remains that weight related problems are on the increase at
an alarming rate. This is clear proof that dieting in its
conventional form just won't work for the majority of
people who are overweight.

Look for weight loss products on the internet and you will
see hundreds of companies making ridiculous claims about
the products that they are trying to offload onto you. In
their adverts they will throw in words like:

Amazing, New, Fantastic, Incredible, Revolutionary,
Astonishing, Astounding, Guaranteed, Breakthrough,
Scientific, Extraordinary.

These words are meant to appeal to your desperation to lose
weight, and sadly they often result in people handing over
their money for products which are never going to work for
them. Try to think of how many weight loss products you or
people you know have purchased in the past that haven't
worked. I'm sure you will know what I am talking about.

You will also find that many companies offer endorsements
and scientific data from so called medical professionals.
Most of these professionals are well paid for their
endorsements. Think about it, if I said to you that I would
pay you ten thousand dollars just for saying my product was
great, would you refuse to take my money?

People see these extraordinary claims and think "wow! This
could work for me; look at all the scientific evidence". So
they hand over their cash and in a month or so they find
themselves back to square one.

If you look closely you will find these words hidden away
somewhere in the advertisement "results may vary". You will
often have to look hard for these words, but I can assure
you that they will be there.

This is a clever way for companies to wash their hands of
any accountability. If they are so sure that they can
deliver what their advertisements promise why do they need
to add these words? They do it because they know that what
they are selling is not going to work for the majority and
if you complain they can say "it does say in the small
print that results could vary".

Be very way of companies that promise you miraculous
results because weight loss doesn't come under the realm of
miracles. The fact behind weight loss is a simple one:

Burning more Calories than you Consume equals Weight Loss

There is no new method or product that will change the
formula above. It has always been that way and it will
always be that way, regardless of what people try to sell
you.

The main problem that people have is not losing weight, but
keeping the weight off. The very word 'diet' conjures up
something of a temporary nature. You go on a diet for a
certain length of time, maybe lose some weight, you feel
happier, and then you come off it. Soon the weight comes
back, and you go through the same process again and again,
until you finally just give up.

Dieting is a short term solution for what is often a long
term problem, so it is not an effective method for weight
loss in the long term. The reason why dieting will never
work in the long term is because most diets are based on a
large cutback in calories. If you are used to a certain
lifestyle it stands to reason that any drastic change will
be an unexpected shock to your body and mind. This is why
it is so hard to stick to a diet.

When you take up jogging for instance, you will not be
capable of running a marathon in a few weeks. Your body and
your mind will need time to adjust to what you are doing.
When it comes to losing weight people expect to see long
lasting results in a short time. This is never going to
happen as you are not giving yourself the time to adjust to
the new methods.

If you are used to eating 4000 calories a day and you drop
down to 2000 a day, what do you think will happen? You may
struggle through for a week or two but your body and your
mind will fight you every step of the way until you give up
and go back to eating 4000 calories a day.

If however if you were to just cut your calories by 250-400
a day, it would be much easier as it won't come as such a
shock to your body. It will be able to handle this
adjustment without too much complaint. After about a month
or so your body and your mind will get used to this loss of
calories, and then you make another small adjustment.

You need to ease yourself into making changes to your diet
and exercise if you want to succeed in losing weight for
good. A quick fix is never going to be the answer, simply
because no matter what you see advertised, there is no
quick fix. Accept this and then you will be able to lose
weight without torturing yourself.

Forget all the fad diets and all the rash promises that
companies make to you. At the end of the day everyone who
is in business wants your money and many unscrupulous
companies will promise you the earth to get it.

Deep down you and I both know that losing weight can be
difficult and it is not something that you will succeed at
in a matter of weeks. Accept the fact that it took time for
you to get where you are today and accept the fact that it
will take time to change that situation.

----------------------------------------------------
To find out more on how to reach your goals for losing
weight permanently go to http://www.easierwayz.com

Why Take a Vitamin Supplement?

Why Take a Vitamin Supplement?
One of the most common questions asked regarding
supplements is: Why should I take a vitamin supplement?
It turns out that the answer is pretty simple. After we
reach a certain age, your regular diet of just eating foods
will not necessarily provide you with the vitamins,
minerals, and enzymes your body needs. Therefore, taking
supplements helps to restore the vitamins, minerals, and
enzymes that you lose or consume on a daily basis.
Restoring the nutrients keeps us healthy and provides a
feeling of wellbeing.

Keeping healthy throughout life is nearly everyone's goal,
although at times it seems a very difficult goal to
achieve. Taking vitamin supplements help keep you strong
and help to increase your immune system's ability to fight
off sickness and disease. Without an adequate supply of
vitamins people get sick more often and for longer periods
of time.

Your body is continually trying to replenish the vitamins,
minerals, and enzymes it uses each day. Vitamins enable
your blood to stay clean; organs work right, digestion work
correctly, and ultimately can keep you from taking that
hospital trip!

Vitamins increase the strength of your immune system and
assist in making sure your organs are functioning right.
One might say that vitamins help keep your body from
falling apart! For example, Vitamin D is used by your body
for absorbing nutrients such as calcium from the foods you
eat. Lacking Vitamin D limits your body from absorbing
these nutrients, no matter how much you eat. Each vitamin
has a different way of working in your body and many
vitamins are essential for human life.

Have you hit that magic age of 35? There is a reason why
many of us joke about 'being over the hill.' You see, when
a person hits about the age of 35, their body begins to
slow down the production of hormones. This production
slowdown affects estrogen in women and testosterone in men.
At the same time, our bodies also slow down the production
of other important nutrients. It's as if our body's
manufacturing capacity went on strike - or at least a work
slowdown!

Taking a vitamin supplement helps make up for the slowing
production of these nutrients in the body. A vitamin
supplement replaces those essential elements that were
never produced by our bodies and replacing them becomes
even more important as we grow older. Vitamins come in a
variety of forms and each does something different but did
you know they also work in conjunction with one another?
This is one of the reasons why a balanced vitamin
supplement is so important.

By taking vitamins you are enabling your body to function
properly and to continue many of the normal activities
experienced before hitting that magic age of 35. As we grow
older we need vitamin supplements to stay strong and
healthy. Without them, we gradually get sicker and for
those who believe they eat right but are really
undernourished, die before the age of 60.

Vitamin supplements can generally be taken in one of two
forms, there is the pill form, and then there is the liquid
form. Although both are proven to work, and both are able
to replenish the missing vitamins that are needed by our
bodies, liquid nutritional supplements are easily absorbed
by the body while many pill supplements just pass through
the digestive tract.

----------------------------------------------------
Ronald Godlewski has successfully founded and run several
businesses and is currently working with Life Force
International growing one of the fastest growing
Independent Memberships. To join Ron's team or for more
information on Liquid Nutritional Supplements and to
receive a FREE Quart of Body Balance visit
http://www.PillFreeSupplements.com or call toll free
1-888-LFI-CUST (1-888-534-2878).

Article From SubmitYOURArticle: Yes, You can Build Muscle/Lose Fat at the Same Time

Yes, You can Build Muscle/Lose Fat at the Same Time
When I was just a youngster in my twenties, I desperately
wanted to gain muscle mass. Like many guys at that age, I
longed to have big arms, wide shoulders, powerful and
sweeping thighs, and a V-shape that tapered down to a small
waist.

Unfortunately, that's not how I looked. When I glance at
old pictures, it appears that I was fooling myself into
believing I looked less like the Pillsbury Doughboy than I
really did. What was wrong? I pumped iron, downed high
quantities of protein, ingested carbs during the so-called
"two-hour window" after my workout. And most importantly in
my mind; I kept my calorie intake high because all the
available information said I needed to "bulk up" – to eat
many more calories than I was burning so I could gain that
desired muscle mass.

Now in my forties, I'm easily gaining natural muscle that I
longed for twenty years ago. Not only that, I'm doing it
while staying lean. Just recently, I decided to lean down
even further – getting my body fat down in the mid-single
digits. I was actually gaining strength and muscle while
doing it.

How can that be? We're told over and over that in order to
gain muscle size, we need to eat a lot. Oh... and if you
have a "fast metabolism" (i.e. blessed with really low body
fat), they'll tell you to turn yourself into a gorging pig
because that's the magic bullet for "getting big"... right?
Well, that will get you "big", but not with the kind of
size that helps you land dates on Saturday night.

The fast metabolism people are being told to eat a lot more
calories than they burn so they can gain muscle. They are
assured by their muscle building gurus that they'll go to a
different phase after they've gained the muscle; a phase in
which they'll burn the fat.

Those with unwanted body fat are being told they'll need to
focus on losing the fat before they can gain any
appreciable muscle. It's said that the restrictive diet
they'll need to adhere to will prevent them from gaining
muscle size.

So here's a quiz question: If the skinny person can't gain
muscle without eating a lot of excess calories and the fat
person got fat by eating excess calories, how is the former
fat person ever going to gain muscle without gaining back
fat and how is the skinny person going to lose fat once
he's "bulked up" without ending up skinny again? Maybe
someone's feeding us something other than food.

The answer: Fat and muscle are completely different tissues
sitting side-by-side on the body. Don't confuse the method
by which one is gained or lost with how the other one is.
If you're slender and you shovel down truckloads of extra
calories while inadvertently missing the ideal muscle
breakdown/recuperation ratio, you'll just end up fat.

Here's a question for the "fast metabolism group". Have you
ever followed the advice of bodybuilding experts and didn't
gain the muscle you expected? You know the advice I'm
talking about; eat A LOT of food, train "HEAVY" (relative
term – how about "make heavy weights into light ones"?),
use big compound exercises, try to sit on your ass as much
as possible, and uh... set your alarm to go off in the
middle of your sleep so you can chug some 2AM whey protein.
Ugh... I don't know about you, but you'll never pull me out
of a good night's sleep just to force down some chalky
powder.

Would you like to know what doing tons of compound
exercises, forced reps, three, four and five-day splits and
eating a lot of calories did for me? It turned me from a
slim guy into a fat guy. When it was time to lose the fat,
the muscle gains were disappointing. Anyone who's been to
my website can attest; whatever muscle was lying dormant
under my body fat – it didn't amount to much.

So the big question: How did I recently gain strength and
muscle size while getting super lean?

I did it by eating slightly more protein than usual. I used
45 minutes of low-intensity cardio work to burn fat as soon
as I got up in the morning. Above all, I made sure my
muscles continued to be trained and recuperated at the
ideal ratio and in my unorthodox manner. That's what's more
important than adhering to some precise caloric regimen.

I'll never again listen to anyone who claims you can only
do one or the other; you CAN gain muscle and lose fat (or
remain lean) simultaneously.

----------------------------------------------------
Scott Abbett is the author of HardBody Success: 28
Principles to Create Your Ultimate Body and Shape Your Mind
for Incredible Success. He is a certified fitness trainer
and a Master Practitioner and Trainer of NLP. To see his
personal transformation visit http://www.hardbodysuccess.com

But I Don't Wanna NOT Eat Gluten!

But I Don't Wanna NOT Eat Gluten!
Here is the thing. I love pasta. I love wonderful
sandwiches – grilled Brie and ham sandwiches with olives
and onions. Juicy hamburgers. Even the perfect pancake once
in awhile. And Mediterranean mushroom couscous. A hearty
turkey barley mushroom soup – so yummy and satisfying. I
love these tasty sensations.

When I tested positive - 4 times over 2 years - for
Gliadian antibodies (the antibodies your body forms when it
is reacting to gluten grains), my very first reaction was
"I DON'T THINK SO!" This is just not happening that I am
going to eliminate gluten grains from my diet.

(Gluten is found in wheat, rye, barley, triticale, kamut,
and spelt. Oats are sometimes included in this group.)

I have been using functional health tests to help me
resolve the negative effects that accumulated over the
years of my life when I was not so kind to my body.

For instance, there was a period in my late 30s early 40s
when I thought I could get away with 2-3 hours of sleep a
night! Was that even me?

Then there were the times when I thought I would be OK
skipping breakfast and not eating until late afternoon. I
can see the brain cells sloughing off now.

Apparently, these kinds of behaviors put a bit of stress on
your body – who would have guessed! I know better, now.

The functional health tests are helping me discover these
imbalances and direct my attention to creating a healthier
and more balanced body functioning. But when it came to
eliminating gluten – here was a line that I wasn't going to
cross.

I've cleared up many of the stressed physical imbalances in
my body, yet I'm still testing positive to gliadian
antibodies. So, the time has come - the time is now - to
just get on with it and give up the wheat (my beloved
pasta) and the barley (good-bye mushroom barley soup that
feels so hearty and nourishing) – luckily I don't care that
much about the other gluten grains.

Giving up things that are showing themselves to not be so
good for you – it's not always that easy. We invest a lot
of ourselves in our habits and the way we always have done
things.

I heartily endorse the idea that eating should be an
emotionally satisfying experience. How boring it would be
if we just ate to consume nutrients. Eating should be
primarily an emotional and social experience – it should be
a healing and nurturing act that we invest with the power
to sustain and support us.

When we are eliminating our food allergies/ food
sensitivities/ gluten sensitivities/ lactose sensitivities,
etc – any of the foods that have been shown to be not
helpful for us in the moment – we are also eliminating all
the nurturing and power that we have invested in that food.
The first thing you do when you learn that some foods are
not a good fit for your body at the time - and that a step
toward healing is to eliminate these foods for awhile - is
to spend a little time "grieving" the loss of those foods.

You are not really grieving the loss of that particular
food – but you are grieving the loss of the nurturing that
you have invested in that food. Go ahead and feel sad,
angry, and upset. But then get over it, eliminate the foods
and find other ways – even other foods - to nurture,
support, and sustain you.

And if you find that, you "just can't face it". Go and do
something else healthy for yourself – knowing full well
that perhaps you won't benefit as much as you might if you
had eliminated the food that is causing stress in your body
right now. It's still better to keep moving along other
open paths than to bury yourself in what seems not possible
for you in the moment.

Eventually, if you keep your attention on health, wellness,
and well being, you will grace yourself with the follow
through you want and just do the thing that is in front of
you to do.

----------------------------------------------------
Mary Ann Copson is the founder of the Evenstar Mood &
Energy Wellness Center for Women. With Master's Degrees in
Human Development and Psychology and Counseling, Mary Ann
is a Certified Licensed Nutritionist; Certified Holistic
Health Practitioner; Brain Chemistry Profile Clinician; and
a Health, Wellness and Lifestyle Coach. Reconnect to your
physical, emotional, mental, psychological and spiritual
natural rhythms at
http://evenstaronline.com

The effects of negative emotiions on your Health

The effects of negative emotiions on your Health
Our body reacts to stress by producing the hormone
adrenaline. For every molecule of adrenaline produced, one
molecule of vitamin C is needed. A depletion of vitamin C
in the body will lead to cardiovascular problems.

Negative emotions are by far one of the 3 most important
factors in illness with diet and environmental toxins.

Included under emotions are: stress, work, family,
neighbours, transport, depression, bad news, death
relatives/ friends, loss of job, divorce, moving house and
any negative event that worries or depresses you.

It is not the event itself that is important but the way
you process it.

Yes, the way we process an event is what does the damage.
Not the event itself.

For example, one person loses her job and goes into severe
depression because their whole life revolved around their
work. They felt needed and the income was needed to pay the
bills. This person has a greater chance of getting sick
than the person who loses her job but hated it anyway and
knows that they can get a better job easily.. or enjoy the
extra time doing nothing.

A story to illustrate this point:

A customer came to me suffering from liver, oesophagus and
lung cancer. His chances of survival with modern therapy
were 0.1% at best. He followed a very strict Macrobiotic
diet and recovered. Eventually, he went back to a normal
diet and died quickly after receiving thermal chemotherapy
in Germany (and eating hospital food). His cancer had been
emotionally triggered by his wife having three miscarriages
in a few years. This gentleman desperately wanted a child
with the woman he loved and could not accept that he may
never have one. This triggered his first cancer
(oesophagus). It was not the event that triggered the
cancer but the way he processed it.

What to do?

To be positive, it is very important to make plans for the
future. Keep your dream(s) alive. Have a goal, have an
ambition. It is OK to be happy. We are not meant to suffer.
Many people who try to become spiritual think that being
poor is the only way to be. This is not my understanding.
Most successful spiritual teachers are well known and well
off. Does this mean they are bad? Not at all.

They are successful because they believe in what they are
doing. They live their dream. God, or whoever you believe
in, never meant us to suffer and be poor. It is OK to enjoy
life. Money is just a mean of exchange. You need some to be
able to live your dream, help yourself and help others.

It is difficult when you have been diagnosed with a cancer
or another serious condition to remain positive. Especially
if your body is giving you pain signals. It is hard to
imagine that you are getting better. The problem will
compound itself, the pain will force your mind to
concentrate on this part of the body, and the more you
concentrate or it, the more you will feel (or imagine) the
pain.

Affirmations such as "everyday in every way I am getting
healthier and healthier" are good. Saying it however is not
enough. You should also try to visualise your tumours or
disease shrinking and disappearing. Constantly keeping this
image and autosuggestion in your mind can greatly help your
body to heal. The best time to repeat the words is last
thing at night just before going to sleep or first thing in
the morning when you wake up. This is the time when your
mind is in alpha state and is most receptive to suggestions.

Good exercises are:

Visualise your tumours being eaten away. There are
different ways of doing this. Use whichever way suits you
best:

* For example a child may visualise his tumours eaten as in
a PAC MAN game.

* An adult may prefer to visualise his tumours being soft
rocks that are gradually eroded by the waves of the sea.

* Imagine that each in breath floods your body with a shoal
of hungry Piranhas that are eating away your problems and
cleansing your body.

Use whatever method is best for you. Make up your own. As
long as your visualisation is strong, you believe in it and
you do it frequently, it will help you.

The support

Emotional support and belief from your spouse, partner,
friends or family is important. If this is not given, it is
better to leave. A very negative home environment will keep
the disease alive and spreading. I know that doing this is
not easy at all, but you are worth it.

Ideally, the cooking associated with recovery should be
from a healthy person with positive energy.

A Story - The power of the mind - From the New York Times,
13 October 1998:

"Many doctors know the story of 'Wright', who was found to
have cancer and in 1957 was given only days to live.
Hospitalised in Long Beach, California, with tumours the
size of oranges, he heard that scientists had discovered a
horse serum "Krebiozen", that appeared to be effective
against cancer. He begged to receive it. "His physician, Dr
Philip West, finally agreed and gave Wright an injection on
a Friday afternoon. The following Monday, the astonished
doctor found his patient out of his 'death bed', joking
with the nurses. The tumours, the doctor wrote later, 'had
melted like snowballs on a hot stove'.

"Two months later, Wright read medical reports that the
horse serum was a quack remedy. He suffered an immediate
relapse. 'Don't believe what you read in the papers, the
doctor told Wright. Then he injected him with what he said
was 'a new super-refined double strength' version of the
drug. Actually, it was water, but again the tumour masses
melted.

"Wright was 'the picture of health' for another two months
- until he read a definitive report stating that Krebiozen
was worthless. He died two days later."

Emotional Freedom Therapy" (EFT)

Many people go for counselling when they have negative
emotions (depression, stress, anxiety, panic attack etc..)
and many are disappointed with the results. Negative
emotions are brought up to the surface and they are left to
deal with them. No advice, as the counsellor is not allowed
to offer any.

The sufferers may have to follow this therapy for months
sometimes years and often with no concrete results. There
is a much quicker and better way.

In December 2000 I was introduced to a therapy called
Emotional Freedom Therapy (EFT). The thinking behind this
therapy is that negative emotions are not only locked into
the emotional (the mind) but also into the physical (body).
Trying to get rid of negative emotions by just working on
the mind will not work as we are only addressing half the
problem. The EFT motto is:

"The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the
body's energy system".

As we all know that we are Mind, Body and Spirit. However
we tend to forget it.

EFT is based on the belief that emotional imbalances are
linked to imbalances in the body's energy system. We cannot
release negative emotions just by working on the mind. We
must also release imbalances from the body.

Correcting these imbalances, which is done by tapping on
certain points, often leads to rapid remedies. EFT uses
meridian points.

Meridian points are also used in Acupuncture, Acupressure
and Shiatsu and find their origin many thousand years ago.
Could men thousand of years ago have been wiser than us? I
think so.

----------------------------------------------------
Patrick Hamouy teaches Reiki Healing, Indian Head Massage,
Emotional Freedom Therapy (EFT), Anatomy & Physiology,
Oriental Diagnosis & Psychic Development. He sees customers
for consultations.in Macrobiotic, Emotional Freedom Therapy
(EFT) and Removal of toxic products from the home
environment Full information on his web site at:
http://www.therapies.com