Imagine that your breakfast consists of a small bowl of
cold porridge, with no "extras", washed down with a weak
cup of tepid tea.
You have no lunch.
For dinner you get a larger bowl of warm maize porridge
with, perhaps, a small portion of stew.
That is the daily diet of most of the poorer people in
sub-Saharan Africa. No wonder there are so few overweight
people there.
Yet, there are some who manage to become overweight even in
that part of the world.
How did they get to be that way?
The short answer is prosperity.
The chiefs, high ranking government officials and those
with prosperous businesses, who can afford a better diet,
put on weight.
With prosperity comes the ability to purchase a wider
variety of foods. It is only natural that a person who has
eaten a restricted diet for much of their life should
select foods rich in taste when they have the ability to
buy such foods.
High Taste Often Equals Wide Waste
Rich in taste often also means high in calories.
But it ain't necessarily so.
There are foods with high taste that do not lead to pounds
on the waist.
However, I digress, there is more to be said about the
relationship between prosperity and body weight.
Imagine, that you have been poor all your life and you
suddenly win millions on the lottery. Your first instinct
would be to go out and spend, spend, spend.
You'd buy all the things you'd always wanted. And then, the
pattern seems to be, you'd go on spending just because you
could.
It is remarkable how many of the big jackpot winners in
every country manage to spend their way through their
entire winnings in a few short years.
So there is a definite pattern of human behavior which
dictates that when a deprived person achieves spending
power they will spend indiscriminately. They simply buy
whatever appeals to their senses of sight, sound, taste,
touch and smell.
Prosperity Creates Indiscriminate Eating Patterns
The same pattern seems to apply with food. When a
food-deprived person becomes prosperous they eat
indiscriminately. They do not concern themselves with a
balanced diet. They simply eat what tastes and smells good.
What is remarkable is that a similar pattern seems to apply
with entire countries. As they become more prosperous, the
population spends more and more and they do it
indiscriminately. We are seeing this very noticeably in
Russia at the moment.
The population, recently released from the financial
restrictions caused by Communism, has become one of the
most consumer goods hungry peoples on earth.
It is only natural that when the people hunger for
something and have the wherewithal to purchase, someone
will supply. This is why all the consumer goods franchises
like Prada, Gucci, Channel, Starbucks and McDonalds now
proliferate in Moscow.
What has this got to do with your weight?
Two parts of the prosperity pattern affect our eating
habits.
First, as people become more prosperous they also become
less interested in labouring. Housework and daily cooking
are seen increasingly as chores to be avoided.
How are they avoided? By eating out, often at fast food
restaurants where the menus are designed to be high on
taste.
As I just said high taste often equals high calories.
When you combine a more leisurely lifestyle with a higher
calorie diet, the waistline just naturally expands.
Calorie Surplus Turns To Fat
So, if you have an expanding waistline you are caught in
the cleft stick of lowering activity and heightened calorie
intake. You have a daily calorie surplus that is turning to
fat.
Research shows that people very quickly become strongly
attached to lifestyle habits. They find it easy to justify
why they "need" to behave in ways that satisfy their
hungers.
The truth is that all they are doing is talking themselves
into believing that they "need" to behave in that way.
The bottom line is that if their survival depended on it
they would change very quickly.
The problem is that people do not see it as a matter of
survival. They are happy to go on poisoning their bodies
with excess calories because they're just plain idle.
It doesn't make sense to take great care about the fuel you
put in your car and not give a damn about what you put into
your body.
It's a weird form of selfishness to care more about the
momentary satisfaction of a taste that lasts for a few
seconds than you do about your body that has to last a
lifetime.
As I said at the start of this article there is an answer.
It is to find new tastes, flavours and smells that appeal
to you just as much, but which don't have the calorie load
of fast or convenience foods.
Losing Weight For 52 Days
I have been losing weight now for 52 days. The weight has
been coming off steadily, week by week. During this time
all my meals have been tasty. I can hardly recall a day
when I felt hungry. Neither can I recall a day when I spent
a lot of time preparing food.
As a married working man, I prepare my own breakfast and
lunch and my wife usually cooks our evening meal.
Breakfast consists of a glass of juice and a bowl of
muesli, with dried fruits and semi-skimmed milk. For lunch
I prepare a salad with French dressing topped with tinned
fish or boiled egg or grated cheese. I also have one or two
pieces of fruit for lunch.
If I need a snack I have a crispbread with a raw vegetable
or some dried fruit and nuts.
Dinner will consist of meat or fish, two vegetables and
potatoes, rice or pasta. For dessert I usually have yoghurt
or fruit or sometimes both together.
I do most of my daily exercises either sitting at my desk
or when I'm out walking the dogs. My diet is varied, tasty
and healthy. But the most important part is that it's
tasty. If it didn't taste good I would quickly get bored
and look for other things to eat.
I have made it my business to care for my body. As part of
my self-care campaign I have taught myself to enjoy
shopping for tasty food and preparing the food in a
taste-full way.
----------------------------------------------------
David Ferrers M.NLP is has been a professional Personal
Development Coach for 21 years. With his Nutritionist
Partner Susanne Floe he developed
http://www.GoneForeverWeightLoss.com to enable people to
discover how to use self-hypnosis to lose weight
permanently and painlessly. Both David and Susanne have
personally used the techniques they recommend to
successfully lose weight and maintain the weight loss.
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