The first phase in the fight against obesity is getting good nutrition education!
Obesity has many contributing factors from diet to genetics. Keeping the causes of obesity simple will enable us to find easier solutions. Three over-arching factors that people can control play significant roles in why people become obese and what they can do about it. Ultimately, the source of both the causes and solutions lies with each individual. Every person who struggles with weight must take personal responsibility for their weight. No one can solve the problem if they are pointing their finger at others or blaming their genetic make-up. You must become knowledgeable about the problem and take action!
Your diet, exercise, and psychological factors are the three principle factors that will impact obesity. Anyone who wants to maintain a weight that is less than what they currently are at needs to address all three. In this article we will focus on diet.
Understand nutrition and control your weight
Americans are generally overweight and spend billions of dollars every year on diets and dieting as well as nutritional supplements and a host of other nutritional products. Regardless of just how much weight you need or want to lose the simple solution is to consume fewer calories than you burn in a day. When done over time you will lose weight. Of course what and when you eat also matters. The good news is the principles for having a good, healthy diet are easy to understand. It is following through with the plan that makes losing weight difficult.
Wrong Goals
Dr. Roy L. Walford, author of Maximum Life Span, in part blames current obesity problems on nutrition education, which has been greatly influenced by an inappropriate research focus from most nutritional scientists, such as members of the American Dietary Association, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Agriculture, and American Society of Nutrition. For some reason these scientists have focused for years on optimizing both maximum growth rate and ultimate body size. Both maximum growth rate and ultimate body size reduce life span potential and increase the frequency and number of diseases. It most certainly can be argued that the focus in research of those scientists has led to an understanding of nutrition that has unintentionally led to obesity problems. The nutrition education that comes from that research has done an injustice to generations of children.
Research from all over the globe shows that under-nutrition versus malnutrition is the only way to increase life span and improve health. There are many approaches to achieving this goal and among all of the approaches there are common principles that need to be adhered to.
The Foundational Nutritional Principles
If you dissect the information in nutrition education you can discover foundational principles. Regardless if you are looking at Natural Hygiene, Ayurvedic, Atkins diet, or a host of other diet information you will find a set of principles you can apply on your own to achieve improved health and longevity.
Your ultimate objective is to adopt a practical nutritional approach that will enable you to maximize your over-all well-being. Nutrition education will be crucial for you to achieve that objective. It needs to provide you with the knowledge to make good decisions that will lead to your ability to maintain a healthy weight while enabling your body to fight diseases. When you can eliminate disease you will increase both your life expectancy and quality of life. Your eating habits will have a significant impact in your ability to reach that goal.
Here are the Principles.
The diet programs we have researched have four foundational principles. The four nutrition education principles are: 1) what you consume 2) food combinations 3) time you eat 4) and moderation. They are all important to be in control of. When you understand the foundation and then become knowledgeable about specific nutritional details you will be in position to adopt a practical, life-changing, approach to your diet.
The food you actually eat makes a difference!
We all must have vitamins and minerals in our diet. Our bodies consist of minerals. One other nutritional component we need to take in are antioxidants, which attack free radicals. Free radicals appear to have increased in our industrialized world at the same time that antioxidants seem to have become more scarce in our diets. By increasing your nutrition education you will improve your ability to make decisions that will allow you to battle the health issues brought on by mineral deficiencies or free radicals. Many of the aging symptoms such as wrinkling skin, graying hair, hearing loss, and eye sight degeneration have all been linked to the presence of free radicals and or a mineral deficiency. Major diseases such as cancer and heart disease have also been linked to this basic nutritional problem. We need to consume over 90 nutrients including minerals, vitamins, amino acids, and fatty acids all of which have traditionally come from plant sources.
It is necessary that we get these 90 nutrients through our diet. Ideally you will do it through whole foods, but if we can’t we need to supplement our diet with nutritional supplements that can readily be absorbed into our system. Your diet also must consist of antioxidants. Antioxidants fight free radicals, which cause damage to our cells. You will ideally want to get those antioxidants through whole foods as well.
While it is important to get antioxidants into your diet current research has shown that without redox signaling molecules the antioxidants do not function. These molecules are naturally produced by our cells but because our cells are often under stress the production of these molecules can be hindered. It is possible to supplement your natural production of these molecules. Your diet then will want to contain all of those components. To get all these nutrients you should eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. A good goal is to have 2/3 of your diet fruits and vegetables.
Our bodies are about 2/3 water. Fruits and vegetables have a high degree of nutrient rich water in them. You can only benefit from following those guidelines. If the fruits and vegetables are organically grown and eaten raw or lightly steamed you will maximize the nutrient value while minimizing the chemical intake from pesticides used in the growing process. Lightly steaming the vegetables will do the least amount of damage to many important enzymes and other nutrients you need.
We really do not know how the nutrient rich water we get from fruits and vegetables will benefit us. We discover new things regularly. We do know that when we eat plants in their natural form we are maximizing the benefits God intended for us. We also know that cultures with diets that consist largely of fruits and vegetables do not have obesity problems as a culture. That alone should tell us something.
If you receive good nutrition education you will learn the value of eating whole grains. Bread has been a primary food in every culture throughout history. The bible has numerous references relating the word of God to bread for the soul. In ancient times breads were made from whole grains. Today we should also eat whole grain bread or learn to make it ourself. You do need to understand that most commercially made breads, even whole wheat bread, is converted into sugar in our bodies. Too much sugar is an enemy to good health. There are some breads that are better than others and you should learning which ones. Ezekiel Breads are one of our favorites. If you follow principle number 4 that will help your approach.
Food Combinations Can Make a Difference
Proper food combining is a nutritional principle that has had its share of controversy. Our digestive system uses two types of digestive juices to digest its food. Acids and bases are used to digest proteins and starches. Many of our typical meals are a combination of starches and proteins. When they are both consumed our bodies must concentrate on digesting one before the other. The food not being immediately digested tends to rot in our stomachs and causes gas. Antacids are one of the highest selling pharmaceutical products in this country. If people would eat properly the need for these remedies would be drastically reduced.
It is becoming more and more evident that poor digestion contributes to disease. Given that information we should consider if avoiding meals that combine starches and proteins – meat and potato meals – would improve our health. Part of that answer would depend on the individual as some people are affected to a greater extent than others. Ayurevedic traditions teach about three basic body types. A characteristic for each type addresses the ability to digest food. Some people have a strong digestive system, some medium, and some fragile. Those with strong would be less susceptible and those with weak would be more susceptible to digestive problems associated with improper food combining.
Properly combining the four tastes, sweet, sour, bitter, and salt, is what Ayureveda teaches. According to that tradition if we are not properly balancing and combining foods with these tastes people can develop diseases or health problems. The principle of proper food combining then should include becoming more aware of what happens to your body when eating starches and proteins together as well as how you include balancing tastes amongst these food categories.
Properly combining fruit is another component of proper food combining. Fruit is one of God’s great nutritional gifts. It is the food with the highest water content and is loaded with vital nutrients and antioxidants. Fruit for many people causes gas and indigestion. Far too often it is because they are consuming the fruit after or during a meal. Fruit tends to break down quickly and pass through to the intestines. When there is other food in the stomach the fruit tends to rot in the stomach instead of quickly passing through to the intestines. Over time this rotting food in a person’s digestive system creates an environment for diseases to develop. Fruit should be eaten throughout the morning hours or as snack food and generally avoided as an appetizer or dessert.
Research is showing that it is better for us to eat more often with protein every meal. Research has also indicated that carbohydrates are best consumed after exercise not before. Now, if we are to consider properly combined foods and still have protein, fruits, and or vegetables with every meal we can use some common sense.
As an individual if you discover that combing carbohydrates and proteins causes gas and indigestion the simple suggestion would be to get the protein later, or possibly in a different form. We would also suggest you eat fruit on an empty stomach and in about 15 minutes eat a more substantial meal. Again, become aware of how your eating habits make you feel. Traditional nutrition education won’t teach this.
Time to Eat
Another principle concerns when to eat. There are two ideas here that some may say are incongruent. One is the thought that we should be eating about five meals per day even if that entails eating around bed time. The other idea involves the understanding that our bodies go through cycles that includes digestion and eliminating the waste. The theory with that thought is if we eat during the elimination cycle our bodies cannot function optimally and we do not properly eliminate our wastes. If we look closely at these schools of thought we can apply some common sense by generally not eating after 8 p.m. or before 8 a.m., unless it is fresh fruit.
Physical Education Institute has several books or nutrition programs it recommends for your continued education. While you continue on this process it is important to acknowledge that these ideas are general principles not nutritional laws. Some experts say you should expect to break these principles about 10% of the time. We believe a the reality for more people will be 20% of the time BUT you should aim for 10%. If you do break the “rules” 20% of the time your dietary habits will still be better than the typical westerner. This is nutrition education curriculum and all its details should be taught in our schools.
Moderation
Moderation is the final principle and is extremely important to nutrition education, just as it is to many aspects of life. Eating moderately certainly is crucial to maintaining good health. It is vitally important to not be in the habit of over-eating. Food can be so enjoyable (and comforting) it can be hard for many people to eat in moderation. If you can simply apply this one principle to your habits the results on fighting obesity and controlling weight would be dramatic for most people. Moderation includes watching both what you eat and how much you eat. You can eat limited amounts of “junk” food if done in moderation. You also need to watch the how much you eat, especially when you begin to eat more frequently. You do need to gain an idea of the number of calories you consume. Being wary of the calories does not mean you necessarily have to keep track of every food you eat and how much to measure the exact number of calories. You should become generally aware of the amount of calories you consume.
These principles are been gleaned from numerous books on diet and nutrition. They are guidelines rather than hard and fast rules. Adopting these guidelines and furthering your nutrition education will ensure you are doing what is necessary to take control of your own health. Develop the mindset of a scientist and experiment with these principles. Learn to take good notes on what happens with your body as you apply them, so you can make adjustments to maintain your well-being!
Continue with your nutrition education.. Unique version for reprint here: The first phase in the fight against obesity is getting good nutrition education!.
March 23, 2011 | Posted by Charles Barnard
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