In Part 1, I revealed to you a miraculous, cheap chemical that, if you add more of it to your life, you'll feel a lot better. By itself, this one chemical can boost your energy, improve your health, soften your skin, keep your weight under control, and it even tastes great! And if you started drinking more of this amazing stuff called water - drinking it during meals and replacing some of your sugary drinks with it, then you probably started feeling the difference almost immediately - like in just a few days. But you want more than one secret to better health the easy way, don't you? Well that's why I'm here again.
Replacing the majority of what I drink with water was a no-brainer, and it made a huge difference. That, combined with a moderate increase in my daily activity, and the near-elimination of pure-junk food led to a loss of about 30 pounds in only 4 months. To lose the next 20 took a little more time and effort, but not much more.
Getting rid of pure-junk food is a huge way to right-size your weight. Most people are worried about losing weight, but there are some people who need to gain it (and some people who THINK they need to lose weight when they really need to gain it - consult a BMI calculator or better yet, a doctor). Right-sizing your weight will go a long way toward improving the quality of your life. So first I'm going to tell you what some of thee incredibly bad foods are and then I'm going to give you an easy way to get rid of them.
First and worst is, you guessed it, sugar. Sugar is in almost everything we eat because it makes things taste better. However, sugar is what's called "cheap energy". It gives you a rush of energy for a very short time and then it's gone and you feel a crash. I've heard people are giving their kids sugar right before bed so that when the crash comes, the kid feels very tired and goes to sleep quickly. What a great way to ruin your child's life! As any diabetic will tell you, too much sugar isn't good for you at all, and giving these kids sugar rushes before bed teaches their body to crave it, plus it gives them a ton of calories with nowhere to go but fat cells.
Take a look at the ingredients list of the things you eat, and sugar is almost always one of the first 3 ingredients. If you are eating food like that, put it down and pick up something else. Breakfast cereals are especially bad about this. Even some of the "healthy" cereals, like Honey Nut Cheerios and Honey Bunches of Oats are loaded with almost as much sugar as Super Sugar Crisp and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Recently I discovered a cereal called Kashi which is a whole lot better for you simply by virtue of having no added sugar. There are two varieties of it I like, which I now eat almost every morning.
The next really bad food is called MonoSodium Glutamate, or MSG. Near as I can tell, the only use for MSG is to make you feel hungry. It's like nicotine for corn chips. Take a look at the Doritos and other flavored chips you eat, and you'll find they have MSG. Now you know why when you open a bag of Doritos you can't stop until you've eaten half the bag. But look, don't be like smokers and alcoholics and blame a chemical for your addiction, because you can manufacture your own chemical that will counteract that. I'll tell you more about that later.
Instead of picking up chips and candy with MSG and sugar, pick up chips and crackers without them. Pick up fruits like dried apricots and raisins, or try sesame oat bran sticks and cocktail peanuts. There are a lot of great alternatives out there that are much better for you than the junk you eat now, and it's not a radical lifestyle change.
The third bad food to avoid is bleach. Yuck, who eats bleach? White bread has been bleached. It doesn't matter if it's whole grain white, it's still white, and that means it's been bleached. And that includes most hotdog and hamburger buns too. Avoiding bleach is pretty easy, just choose bread that isn't white. I like whole grain honey wheat bread myself, and when I'm at the burger joint, well, they don't give me the option to have healthier bread, so I don't go there that much. But if you're making your own burgers, the store does stock non-bleached buns nowadays, so get these instead. Also, a lot of crackers and pretzels are bleached. And if you're thinking of going on the subway diet, don't get your sub on white bread; they've got a lot of good non-white breads.
The fourth thing you should avoid is artificial sweeteners. These are worse than sugar! That's right, those diet colas and no-sugar health foods that use artificial sweeteners instead of sugar are actually worse for you. And let's face it, they don't taste that good anyway. Many artificial sweeteners break down into things like formaldehyde, which they use to preserve dead creatures against decay, and that's the least of the problems they cause. Sure, they might not spike your blood sugar as bad if you're diabetic, but that doesn't mean they're good for you.
The fifth and final thing that's really bad for you is fried foods. I know, I know, they're so delicious, how can you avoid them? But you should try to eat less of them. Most seafood menus nowadays have an option to have your order broiled, which is better than frying, and you don't have to fry your chicken. Frying foods obliterates any health value they may have had, so don't pat yourself on the back for eating fried chicken strips or fried okra.
Completely eliminating all these bad types of food is almost impossible, but by making better choices and substituting good foods for bad ones, you'll find that you can eat less of the bad foods, and if you want, you can still have them once in a while without having to feel guilty.
Don't reach for a candy bar, reach for raisins, dried apricots, a banana, an apple, a granola bar (not the sugary kind!), sunflower seeds, an onion, a stick of gum, some watermelon, or any of a number of other things that are, if not good for you, at least not as bad. You can have as many green vegetables as you want; try to find ones you'll like. Try eating cucumber halves as a replacement for a candy bar. Or onions. Or broccoli. Broccoli has a lot of good stuff in it. Just be sure you eat these vegetables raw; cooking them ruins their health value.
I understand that you're not going to succeed at this every single time. It's okay, you don't have to. I'm HARDLY the picture of strict dieting. I still eat pizza, candy bars, ice cream, Doritos, and drink pop, but I don't eat them every day. Sometimes I don't even eat them every week. Sometimes not even every month! I'm at the point now where I don't feel like I HAVE TO eat that stuff. I have so many more opportunities to eat interesting things that I simply don't get around to eating the bad stuff so much.
If you can make a deal with yourself to pick something good instead of something bad every other time you have a craving, that's a good start right there. Small steps, not big ones. Remember Secret #1.
Have you, or would you, pay $100 for a diet that was sure to work? If so, then why not spend a lot less than that trying out some new foods to see how you like them? Many people pay thousands of dollars dieting, and it usually doesn't work, but this has worked for a lot of people, and more importantly, it's worked for me. I've found some new foods to eat instead of the junk I used to always eat, and I'm a lot better for it.
If you heard there was a food ingredient that was a poison that was GUARANTEED to kill you, would you start checking your food ingredients to make sure that wasn't in there? So start checking your food labels for the kinds of ingredients I've mentioned, because these things ARE poisons, they DO increase your chances of getting cancer, and the less of them you eat, the better you're going to feel.
So take the small step of buying some new foods that are better for you, and every time you have a craving for something, flip a coin. Heads, you try the new food, tails, you can eat the junk food.
And be sure to drink plenty of water with it.
Until next time,
Be your best!
- Jaycee
Hey, if you feel I've done you a favor with my site, do me a favor in return and take a look at some of these products from Amazon, maybe even buy some of them. Every purchase you make through one of my links goes to support this site, even if it's not exactly what I linked up, and keeping this site running will benefit many more people. Thank you for giving back!
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More articles of interest or amusement:
To Your Health - Part 1
Christy Brinkley, Terry Bradshaw, and many more - 1999
To Your Health - Part 3
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