DEFINITION
Exercise
The activity of exerting your muscles in various ways to keep fit
Exercise is an interesting concept isn’t it? I’m sure our ancestors, who toiled the lands every day for hours on end in order to grow food, would laugh when they saw all of us at our pilates, step aerobics, and spinning classes. Or what if they saw us spending hours in the gym, just to get exercise and get fit? It is laughable really, don’t you think? Us standing in front of the tv going along with the latest craze in keep fit. “Yeah, I used to do tae-bo, but that’s so last year…”
Fitness has become a fashion, and millions of dollars is spent on it every year by overweight, under-worked people, desperately trying to look “perfect;” which of course never happens, because they were “too busy” to go last week, and “they’ve got a lot on, next week,” and anyway, “it’s not really working, I think I might try something else!”
What’s going on? We are turning into a world of fat people, and before all you politically correct types start to get upset, let’s go into this together, shall we? We are, at our core, an animal just like the other animals who live on the planet.
Physiologically we’re no different. We have bones, fat, and muscle just like a lion, or a tiger. Now, how many of you have seen fat lions?
Over the millions of years we have been evolving, our bodies have turned into lean, delicately balanced machines, with just the right quantities of everything. We can increase muscle to make ourselves stronger, but can someone tell me what putting on fat does for us, unless it’s to keep us warm at night perhaps?
Be proud to be fat!
Big and lovin’ it!
Unfortunately, some overweight celebrities in western countries seem to be promoting that it’s ok to be fat. Now we have fat people just accepting they are fat, and that’s it. I am not anti fat people, I just want you to be aware that it is not our natural state. Being fat means just one thing – you eat too much of the wrong thing (unless you have a “disorder,” in which case, accept my apologies).
You crave animal fats, sugars, simple carbohydrates, anything processed, sugary drinks, and beer – the list goes on and on. “Oh I’ve always had a problem with my weight, I just can’t seem to shift it,” or “it’s probably genetic, my father was a big man too,” and many other excuses. You may not even want to lose weight. It may not be important to you. But recognise one thing. Not eating fatty foods doesn’t make you fat. Doing physical work does not make you fat.
Let’s go back to talking about your natural state. The one where the whole body is in balance.
Being overweight puts more strain on the system physically, makes you slothful (disinclined to work or exertion), and dulls the mind, but today’s sedentary lazy lifestyles in the western developed countries are seen as a privilege, something we have worked towards, something we could say we have earned.
No longer do we have to toil in the fields, now we can sit back and enjoy ourselves and eat. And watch tv. And sit. And eat. And drive in the car. And sit. And eat. So something must have changed to allow us to do this. After all, if you are out working in the fields all day, the likelihood of becoming overweight, is, if you’ll pardon the pun, “slim.”
Work has moved from the hand to the mind
That is precisely what has changed in western civilisation. No longer is everyone out toiling all day. Now, lots of us have jobs which don’t require any physical work at all – even those who do manual jobs now use machines to assist with any heavy work – and coupled with the rise in working hours demanded by employers, and the easy accessibility of processed fast food (anything not home made), is it any wonder we have become obese?
“Hold on a minute,” says you, “what about all the office workers in asia, you do not notice they are fat, and yet they work long hours, have easy access to fast food, and don’t do much physical work, why aren’t they fat?”
That is a good question, but for that, we will have to look, not at a genetic predisposition to be slim (because as you will remember, being slim is our natural state), but at their choice of foods.
Their diet is made up almost entirely of low fat products, including lots of vegetables, and their diet is free (in the main) from dairy products which are made from animal fats, whereas our diet is high in dairy products; from cheese to yoghurt; from milk to creamy sauces and ice cream. The thing is, we just don’t seem to be able to cook without dairy products. I include eggs in this, even though they are not strictly dairy, as they go hand in hand with things like butter and milk when cooking.
Give up dairy products? Never!
We are addicted to dairy products and we don’t even seem to realise it. I gave up dairy for good this year, and although I consider myself a versatile cook, I really struggled with some recipes I used to like making. Nearly all had dairy products in them. Even a basic lasagne needs milk and butter to make the white sauce, and grated cheese for the topping.
So, with my old recipes out the window, I embarked on finding new ways of cooking and I started to realise that what I was eating (even as a vegetarian) was so heavily influenced by dairy, which is unfortunately full of fat. I discovered that getting used to not eating animal fats was pretty easy, although my mind did start craving things like milk chocolate, yoghurt, and cheese. It amazed me that I was actually craving specific types of food, and I could only put it down to the animal fats I was eating.
In the days when people were labouring all day, they probably didn’t notice they were eating so much fat, as they were burning the same or more energy than they were taking in; but with the almost slothful work that is undertaken by most people in western developed countries (I am not saying that people don’t work hard, just that they don’t use their physical labour as much as they used to) and the odd hours we keep, eating is done whenever we get a chance. Sometimes eaten on the go, and sometimes eaten late at night before bed (alcohol, which is fattening is also mostly drunk late evening), and surprise surprise, we start putting on weight.
We then notice one day that our clothes feel a little tighter, we start to see a few bulges, where there didn’t use to be any, but we’re much too busy to worry about it. What’s a little more fat? We can always lose it next week. But of course we’re always much too busy. We have stressful lives. We don’t have time to think about losing weight, until one day we decide to do something about it, by which time we have put on so much that we can’t just lose it in a week. So we panic.
“How can I lose weight? How do I look? I look terrible. My clothes don’t fit me any more. I need to get slim!” So we join a gym, go to an aerobics class, go on a crash diet, get a personal trainer, buy a book, or a dvd by a famous celebrity who has never been fat, and buy slim shakes to drink. We are desperate and now we’ll try anything.
The diet companies start rubbing their hands in glee! Woo hoo! Another customer who has eaten too much fat, too much sugar, and never does any exercise. So they milk us for everything we have (pardon the pun). They sell us a diet dream to look wonderful again in just thirty days! No catch! They are making a fortune out of us selling us fat food, and the same companies are making a fortune selling us the healthy alternatives after we’ve become too fat!
I wonder how many of you have tried to lose weight in the past. Recently I have noticed that I have been putting on weight, although only in the tummy area, fortunately, and I am now making sure I return to my system’s optimum weight in the soonest possible time. Excess weight brought on by sitting writing this book for over two years, doing little exercise, and eating too many dairy products! I am well on the way, now I am eating no dairy, and only wholegrain cereals and breads, beans and pulses, steamed vegetables and rice, local pearled spelt, or barley, but more on that in another topic.
It just seems to me that we are behaving in the complete reverse of what is good or indeed essential for the system, by eating way too much for the amount of exercise we do. We subsequently put on weight, become lethargic and unhappy with ourselves, and our mind loses its sharpness, as our system spends its whole day in a state of digestion. Breakfast. Mid morning snack. Lunch. Mid afternoon snack. Dinner. Late evening snack (and perhaps alcohol).
Cutting down on eating, not only helps you to look good and feel good, it helps your mind stay more focussed and become clearer. You are a perfect finely tuned human being, and clogging up your body with fat makes it harder for your perfect system to operate.
Would you deliberately add butter to your car engine if all it needed to run was petrol? Think about it. Given that we are here now, and there is no going back to start again, we must start to look at what kind of fuel our body needs, how often, and how much, and we must balance the amount we eat with exercise; walking or running for example. Not only does exercise burn calories, but it releases well needed endorphins to make you feel good too! It can also help clear your mind of any stresses and strains, turning cotton wool thinking into razor sharp clarity.
I mentioned running as a good choice of exercise (although the “experts” may not agree with me), because I have been doing it for the last 27 years, and have found it to be of great benefit for body and mind.
And as it is done outdoors (preferably in a green space), it helps us to reconnect with our natural state, away from the madness of western style city living.
Clear your mind. Clear your arteries. Get rid of the fat in your diet. Get rid of the fat on your body. Become the truly amazing human being you already are, you just need a little push in the right direction! Don’t waste your time going to quack fitness gurus and diet goddesses, spending your hard earned money trying to lose the weight you spent your hard earned money putting on!
Give up fat! Give up dairy. Give up eggs, cheese, milk… Go on, you can do it! Make a positive shift for yourself. Don’t listen to your addicted brain telling you you can never do it.
You don’t need all that fat, especially the fat from the milk of another animal. Just think, the milk you drink is meant for the calf of the cow! You wouldn’t give human breast milk to a calf would you? Why? Because mother’s milk contains just the right amount of protein and vitamins to help the offspring grow and mature into a healthy animal. As every species is different, the quantities vary greatly, and if you hadn’t noticed, you gave up drinking your mother’s milk a long time ago.
Human breast milk – like animal milk – is there to provide the newborn with the right amount of nutrients when it is newly born! You would think it strange if they were selling bottles of human breast milk on the supermarket shelves, wouldn’t you?
Or what if everything you ate, or drank contained human breast milk? You would find that strange wouldn’t you? And that is milk designed for our species! You are drinking the breast milk of another species, designed for newborns! And throughout our lives, we continue to drink it. Why? Because we are told it is good for us. “It contains calcium,” they say, but there are many products that are higher in calcium and more easily absorbed by the body.
It is just traditional in western countries to use dairy (cow breast milk) in everything we eat. We are used to having milk in our tea and coffee. We are used to having cream on our apple pie, because our mother put milk in our tea and cream on our pie. We don’t need these products at all, but we have become addicted to them. If you want evidence we don’t need them, just look to the asian diet which contains almost no dairy products, no cheese, no milk, and no butter.
So where do they get their calcium from? They seem healthy, you don’t see fat people on the streets, surely they can’t survive without their daily glass of milk as recommended by the government health agencies? In my opinion the promotion of dairy products has more to do with keeping the farmers in business than anything to do with our well being.
Our body systems are amazingly complex, honed over millions of years, with only the most successful traits carried on into future generations. How do you think it was possible that the human being has developed a need for the breast milk of another species? I don’t know about you, but that seems laughable. Oh, if you want any other reasons to stop dairy products, then just imagine being hooked up to an automatic suction pump for three-quarters of the year and forced to lactate. That’s a nice thought isn’t it?
So what’s the answer to this obvious problem of obesity that is scourging western nations? Give up dairy? Give up alcohol? Join a gym? Do more physical work? Maybe all the above, but one thing we haven’t covered is why people allow themselves – which they do – to get fat. Well, no one forces us to eat; we physically lift the pizza, the soft drinks, the beer, and the cheese to our lips and swallow, so we do it to ourselves!
We eat and we eat until our waist lines start to bulge, our trousers become a little tighter, and our rear end starts protruding more. Soon, our face starts to look bloated, our arms and legs become fatter, and we start to sweat more. We find ourselves short of breath walking up a few stairs, all but the gentlest of exercise leaves us puffing and panting, and suddenly it’s too late. We’re so overweight that to think about cutting down on fats wouldn’t make any significant difference, and dieting would require going through physical and psychological pain, so we just accept it. We are fat.
Your self-esteem (a feeling of pride in yourself) diminishes and you just give up. You now have to buy fat people’s clothes, join weight loss clubs, and watch tv programs where you’ll learn that it’s ok to be fat. It’s not. It’s not good for your system. Your heart and all your organs are designed to work with a lean body.
Imagine for a moment that you had a two litre family saloon. It has a chassis that is designed to work with that engine. If you started loading too much extra weight onto your car and then tried to tow more than the engine could manage, you would notice that your car really started to struggle. It wasn’t built to carry that amount of extra weight, and neither is your body. Think about it. Feeling heavy and sluggish is not just a physical ailment either; the more weight you put on the more sluggish your mind becomes. It starts to become dull, it loses it vibrancy, sharpness, and inquisitiveness. It can only think about food now.
You may think these examples are extreme, but as western nations, we are becoming obese. We have to stop this trend in its tracks. Not through government initiatives and healthy eating adverts, but through ourselves. By using our minds.
But first, we have to accept we are addicted to eating. We don’t just eat to survive, we live to eat; and big business has caught onto that fact. Before you start blaming them, they are just fulfilling a demand for fast, sweet, salty, fatty processed food.
We love all that stuff. Mmmmm, it just tastes sooo good. But this isn’t your stomach telling you it tastes good, this is the pleasure centre of your brain telling you it wants more, more, more. Just like cocaine, heroin, cigarettes, and alcohol, this fatty, rich, processed food is satisfying a craving, and once the brain tastes these addictive substances, it remembers it likes them and motivates you to get more!
Ignore it. It isn’t real. You don’t really want these foods. They are not good for the system. The cravings are an illusion created by your brain. The more you abstain from these substances the less your brain will crave them. You are a wonderful, amazing animal, a human being – the most intelligent species on the planet; it’s time to start living up to that label and start looking after ourselves before we become obese.
A good start is to avoid any pre-packaged, processed food.
If it comes in a packet, you can be sure it has been processed to some extent. I know you’re busy, but it’s time to start buying the raw ingredients and remembering how to cook – and while you’re at it, get rid of your microwave. Yes, I know it’s convenient, and it allows you to reheat everybody’s meals at different times, because you all come in at different times, and anyway you’re too tired to cook, and it’s quick, and you’re hungry now; but if you are too tired to cook food, you should look at why you are too tired to cook!
You have to work longer and harder than ever before for your employer (who would get you to work 24 hours a day if they could) amongst other things. So, fast meals are actually a real plus for employers! It means they don’t have to worry about you complaining that you have had to work overtime, because they know you can buy a ready meal and cook it in 0.087 seconds in a strange box that does weird things to your food!
Getting rid of the microwave will help you to think more about the food you buy and cook, as you won’t just be able to slop it on a plate and heat it. You will have to take more time, and make more time, for cooking. You will start to look at the ingredients you are putting into the food. You will notice how much animal breast milk you are using in your human cooking. You will become more aware of the food you are putting into your mouth and swallowing.
You will become more aware of yourself. You will realise that what you consume reflects how you look externally, and it feels nice to look good. You can see the health in your skin and your eyes. Your self-image will be stronger. You will look good, feel good, and your mind will be clearer. It’s amazing that you can get all these positive benefits by just choosing to eat non-processed, non-packaged food. You will want to live a more healthy lifestyle. You won’t want to fill your body up with toxins any more. It feels good to be alive!
You will take more pleasure in nature, you will walk more because you feel good and strong. Your brain will start to lose its addictions. All because you started to think what you were putting into your mouth.
It all starts with food. Every other change you make is purely external. There’s no good exercising four times a week if you stuff your face with processed food. Exercise is important, but only if you eat well first. It’s not the only answer. You may do a physical job for a living, but eating processed food is just filling your body up with toxins.
Some of you might not care that you eat processed foods. You might not care that you are overweight. You might not care that you drink animal baby milk, but then that is symptomatic of the whole of western society, so you are not alone! It’s ok not to care. No one is forcing you to, but all I hope is that you will start to think a little bit about what you are doing to you magnificent body system – a system so advanced, that man, with all his intelligence could never hope to replicate it. A system you stuff with burgers, pies, beer, wine, drugs, and animal fats.
In fact, the only reason we aren’t completely toxic is because our system is so advanced. Think about it. You don’t care what you put in to your body – because it manages to expel most of the toxins you ingest – until you get sick. It seems the only time we gain real awareness of what we are doing to ourselves is when we end up in hospital.
Someone I know recently had a quadruple heart bypass, which was preceded by a heart attack, preceded by ten years of angina. He ate too much fatty food, drank too much alcohol, and finally his body gave up. Fortunately the wonders of modern medicine managed to save him. Now he is a changed man. He doesn’t drink. He has become vegetarian, doesn’t eat any animal fats (dairy/eggs), and is determined to lead a healthy lifestyle from now on! All it took for him to get this awareness was that he nearly died! Isn’t it a pity that it takes such drastic events to convince us, the most intelligent species on the planet, to do something good for our system?
So you may not care now, but this unhealthy living is destroying our systems. For what? The psychological pleasure of eating a cheeseburger, a cake, a toasted cheese sandwich, or drinking a pint of beer? So for all of you who don’t care out there, just notice how you feel when you eat processed foods and creamy sauces, and compare it to how you feel when you eat a piece of steamed broccoli! “Ugh, plain broccoli, that’s so boring,” I hear you say. And that is precisely the difference between the two foods. One is “boring” the other is “really tasty.” Why do you think that is?
Do you think the stomach thinks that the broccoli, which is full of vitamins the system needs, is boring, or do you think the real reason you find plain steamed broccoli “boring,” is because it doesn’t contain the addictive chemicals which work on the pleasure centres of your brain?
Cheeseburger or steamed vegetables? Sweet fatty sauce, versus healthy vegetables?
On the surface it’s no competition, is it? Anyone who was intelligent would pick the healthy option. But we don’t, do we? We buy the one brain is most addicted to. Start to notice it…
What have you got to lose?
The only losers will be the companies that make billions of dollars keeping us addicted to their processed junk, and that can’t be a bad thing, can it?
