Are you on a diet?

I saw this questions today, and my first response was, "What a silly question!"

Everyone is on a diet of some kind. Your diet is what you are taking into your body.

The better question would be, "Are you aware of your diet and it's consequences?"

Most people, in my opinion are very unaware of their diet and it's consequences. They just go along eating what looks good, or sounds good, or smells good. Unfortunately these perceptions are highly influenced by advertising of all kinds. Most people do not read food labels, and in fact wouldn't know what to look for if they did. Most people eat junk food that they don't know is junk food.

Even many people who are aware of their diets, because they are "watching" their weight or are concerned about certain health issues, don't know enough to analyze what their diet is doing to them.

There is so much misleading diet information out there. It can be a daunting task to make sense of it all. Many recommended diets for health and weight control, are actually not good for you in the long run.

Keep your diet simple and straight forward. Don't go for special mixes or supplements. These are just extra expense that is not necessary. As long as you are eating good whole natural foods and eating them mostly in raw form, your body will take in the goodness that God created in these wonderful foods. Your body will have what it needs to balance it's systems.

If you buy packaged foods from the grocery store, please learn to read the labels. Disregard all health claims printed on the package, they are meaningless. The nutrition label can be useful, but when it really comes down to your health, it too is mostly meaningless. What you really want to read is the ingredient list!

The major thing that you are doing in reading the ingredient list is to make sure that there are not toxins that will cause harm in the human body. The worst ones you want to watch out for are:

High Fructose Corn Syrup

Hydrogenated Oil (any kind of oil)

The elimination of those two ingredients would probably improve the health of the nation immensely.

The second group of things to try to eliminate would be those that are not necessarily toxins but are know to compromise your health in various ways. The worst of these offenders would be:

Sugar and ALL artificial sweeteners (sugar is much better than any artificial sweetener)

MSG (Mono Sodium Glutamate)

Artificial Colors or Flavors of any kind

Next, watch out for any chemical names that you can't identify. In many instances these are just vitamins that have been added in, but sometimes these are strong chemicals that can cause imbalances in the human body.

Ideally the ingredients should be words you can understand, that you could possibly grow in your garden, or your neighbor's garden (if your thumb isn't so green).

Of course the best course would be to buy fresh fruit, veggies, whole grains, nuts & seeds, and lentils and prepare them yourself at home. Try to get to the point of eating 80% of these in a raw form.

Encourage those that you love and care about to become aware of their diets. Help them to learn to read labels and/or buy fresh food. Ignore all the hype about calories, proteins, carbohydrates, fats, etc.

Try to eat good food, drink plenty of good water, get a good nights sleep each night, exercise 5 or 6 times a week, and let your body take good care of you.

Remember that health comes from within. We need to give our bodies the resources that they need to take care of themselves.

Just eat a high quality natural foods diet, exercise, drink plenty of good clean water, make sure you get fiber (whole raw foods), get plenty of sleep, breathe deeply and have a gratitude attitude.

Your body will take care of you, if you take care of it.

Coach G.

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Success in health comes from lifestyle described at http://ghlcom.com.

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Tags: balance, calories, carbohydrate, consequences, diet, fats, health, healthy body, ingredients, labels, proteins, toxins, whole foods

Catagories: Basics, How To, lifestyle