What You're Eating Makes A Difference

A great post from VeryWell.com explains why diet is an important part of losing weight.

Forget about starving yourself, losing weight is about eating foods that burn more calories and stop eating and drinking the stuff that puts weight on.

Nutrition and weight loss go hand-in-hand. It really comes down to chemistry and math. Consume too many calories (energy), weight is gained. Creating a caloric deficit stimulates weight loss. Sounds fairly simple.

Everyone seems to be on the search for something quick and easy. Very Low-Calorie Diets (VLCDs) are popular but disregard possible health risks. They are also very expensive. Seems like a risky high-dollar cost to shed unwanted pounds.

I teach eating “real” quality food to maintain a fit physique and at a cost-saving. Want to begin a healthy weight loss journey? Review what you're eating now in order to make healthy changes.

Healthy weight loss is no more than one to three pounds per week.

Time for a Lifestyle Change
Losing weight is a pretty straightforward process. It will require a nutrition lifestyle change together with regular exercise for the best overall results. Quality healthy food choices are important.

Are you eating processed foods, dining out, drinking alcohol and soda regularly? Revising these choices will be important for success. Start by keeping a food journal. Write down what you're eating and sub out unhealthy meals for healthier selections.

Studies show people who maintain a consistent food journal have the best weight loss success. The journal allows for accountability. You will be able to repeat personal best weight loss weeks simply reviewing what has been recorded.

The Right Foods and Right Portions
Eating healthy should be enjoyable, taste great, and never a burden. Essential nutrients for weight loss include lean proteins, fiber, antioxidants, and healthy fats.

Eating correctly portioned meals is essential. Portion size is what can fit in the palm of your hand and simplifies eating healthy. It also reduces the need to continuously count calories.

Normal hunger occurs every two to three hours so many people take advantage of nutrient timing. Eating several small meals per day keeps our metabolism boosted. It also promotes satiety and eliminates urges to binge on guilt-laden food.

Keeping the focus on consuming healthy foods will be the success in adopting a healthy lifestyle and reaching your goal weight.

Enjoy a Variety of Healthy Foods
There are a wide variety of healthy foods to satisfy the pickiest eater for weight loss and an overall healthy lifestyle.

The following foods will be helpful to start your eat-right journey for successful weight loss.

Best Proteins
Chicken Breast (boneless/skinless) – 3.5oz, 30g
Turkey – 7g protein per ounce
Tuna – 6oz, 40
Salmon – 3.5oz, 27g
Halibut – 4oz, 30g
Trout – 4oz, 28g
Sardines – 4oz, 10g
Eggs (high in EFA) – 1 large, 7g
Milk – 1 cup, 8g (1% or skim, if tolerated)
Cottage Cheese – 1/2 cup, 15g
Almonds 8g, Peanuts 9g, Cashews 5g – 1/4 cup
Peanut Butter – 2tbsp, 8g
Kefir – 14g per cup
Yogurt – 8-12g per cup
Tofu – ½ cup, 10g

Top Antioxidants
Blueberries - at least a fistful a day
All rich colored berries (strawberries/blackberries/raspberries/cranberries/Aronia berries)
Sweet potatoes – at least ½ cup serving daily
Broccoli – eat ½ cup raw or 1 cup cooked daily
Tomatoes – One medium
Acai – look for quality juice
Beans - Eat two 1/2 cup servings a day of cooked or canned beans
Oats (steel-cut is the best) - Eat at least three servings of whole grains per day. A serving equals one cup cooked oatmeal, 1/2 cup uncooked rolled oats or 1/4 cup steel-cut oats
Spinach – one cup cooked spinach or leafy green vegetable per day
Dark chocolate - Eat a one-ounce serving daily
Red wine or Concord grape juice 4oz – 1 glass daily
Green and white tea – up to 4 cups daily

Eat Healthy Fats
Extra virgin olive oil
Coconut oil
Wild salmon (fresh, frozen, and canned)
Ground flaxseeds
Flaxseed oil
Walnuts
Herring
Sardines
Sablefish
Anchovies
Farmed oysters
More »

Stay Consistent
In order to lose weight being consistent with healthy food intake will be necessary. There is no such thing as perfection and only progress.

Take one day at a time and know there will be slip-ups. If you do get off track, let it go and make a better choice with your next meal. Food guilt only drags us down and prevents moving in a positive direction.

Use the palm as your portion size, selecting healthy foods as listed above. Eating every two to three hours is a great beginning to reaching your goal weight and adopting a healthy lifestyle.

Look for my podcast by searching “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight” on the podcast app that you use. You’ll see a piece of my book cover.

If you really want to lose your body fat look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You'll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. 

There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $3.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans, or meal plans. Look for my book. at Amazon.com, bn.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

 

Are You Descent To Gain Weight?

In short, no, but you are descent to put extra fat in those same parts of your body that your parents did. You will only add fat to your body if you eat too much fat. 

Your genes are why your eyes are brown and your hair is red. They are what make you,  "you". But can genetics determine the size of your jeans?

Research shows that differences in your genes can lead to weight issues. So if your parents are obese, you’re more likely to be, too. But that doesn’t mean you will without question. Many people with obesity in their families aren't heavy. And you can fight the odds with diet and exercise.

Is There a “Fat Gene?”

There’s one gene that’s getting a lot of attention, called FTO. Scientists found that people with certain differences in this gene have a 20% to 30% higher chance of obesity. And those differences are pretty common. That said, I don't think your genes will make you fat, but your parent's genes change as they change. So if they were overweight when you were conceived then maybe those genes may have created a fat baby, but that doesn't mean you're going to stay fat. I remember a case in my family where one boy was born over 11 

pounds but throughout childhood and now as a young adult his weight is perfectly normal.

Dozens of other genes are linked to weight as well. Some, for example, cause people to just naturally store more fat. That could be heredity. But it’s still unclear exactly how much weight genes really do carry. Are you really destined to be overweight?

“Obesity is a very complex disease, and many factors can contribute to it and cause it, including genetics, behavior, and environment,” says Naima Moustaid-Moussa, Ph.D., director of the Obesity Research Cluster at Texas Tech University. Obesity can run in families -- not because of genetics, but because of habits and environment, she says.

More than a third of adults in the United States are obese, Moustaid-Moussa says. “The number of Americans with obesity has steadily increased over the past five decades, but this can’t be explained by some dramatic changes in our genes.”

Jung Han Kim, Ph.D., an obesity researcher, and professor at Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, agrees. Obesity has increased around the world with industrialization, a sedentary lifestyle, and a fat-filled diet, she says.

The Bottom Line

Family history alone doesn’t seem to be enough to make you obese. “Genetics does play a role, but the truth is who you are is still determined by how you live your life,” Li says.

So the same advice holds true:

Get active. Aim for 2 1/2 hours of moderate-intensity exercise like brisk walking every week. Even doing 10 minutes at a time helps. Weight training, done at least twice a week, will help make your muscles strong.

Eat less. Cut calories. Lopping off 500 to 1,000 a day can help you lose 1 to 2 pounds a week.

Choose good-for-you foods. Go for fruit, veggies, whole grains, and fat-free or low-fat dairy foods. Fish, lean meats, beans, eggs, and nuts are also good options.

There's a bunch of different opinions about cutting calories for weight loss. Personally, I had to change the food I was eating. If you eat fresh, healthy foods you will be cutting calories. It's all the manufactured foods and drinks that are loaded with calories.
We are a product of our environment and in your early years, you eat whatever your parents feed you. And the exercise you get depends on your parents. So before you reach middle school you are pretty much programmed to do whatever your parents allow you to do, which depends a lot on the region of the country and whether you live in the city or country.

Those formative years are very important in the way you will develop as an adult. So in some respects, if you're looking for someone to blame, maybe your parents did have something to do with your weight problem. But most of the chubby kids in school have lost that fat, I know I did, so you can't use that excuse forever. 

Look for my podcast by searching “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight” on the podcast app that you use. You’ll see a piece of my book cover.

If you really want to lose your body fat look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You'll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. 

There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $3.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans, or meal plans. Look for my book. at Amazon.com, bn.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

 

Overweight and Out Of Shape, Take A Look At Your Future

I REBLOGGED THIS POST FROM A WEBSITE I READ CALLED NO-BRAINERFITNESS.COM. THE AUTHOR NAILED THIS. WHY CAN'T MORE PEOPLE SEE WHAT THEY DO TO THEMSELVES?

TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT FUTURE YOU

Why don’t we exercise enough?

Is it because we are too lazy? Not disciplined enough? Unable to stay motivated?

If you’ve read my most recent post, you know those are essentially the questions we were left with at the end. Because we have all the evidence we need about why we should exercise.

If you’ve read anything else on this blog in the past, you know the answer is not in motivation or discipline, two strategies that will fail you eventually, or drive you (and many around you) nuts.

It is pretty clear that only the strongest Purpose can keep us going in the long term. Yet for most this sense of Purpose remains elusive.

So while it seems we have a tendency to be lazy, the truth is slightly different. You could say we are “wired” to be lazy, to economize our efforts, and only the strongest of wills can hold firm on their self-commitments.

By the way, this is not a figment of my imagination or some wild theory I just came up with. It comes from research in behavioral economics, which others could probably explain better than I can.

But I’m going to explain it to you in my own words. With the help of visuals from a really good talk I recently watched on YouTube. (Even if you think you don’t have time, if you are serious about understanding fitness and long-term health, you should be watching that talk. After reading this post.)

The Truth

Most of us have a strong discounting rate when it comes to our “Future Selves”. (That’s a term borrowed from economics, and it is highly accurate in meaning. However, most of us are not bankers and economists, thankfully. So…) To put it more simply, I hope, the problem is as follows: when you think about the way Future You will be, the possibility of a healthy and active Future You is not seen as important enough because it is too far into the future.

Even though you want to be healthy and fit (who doesn’t?), the Future You is too remote, too distant, too hard to see clearly. The present, and very near future, occupy all that your mind can really consider and act upon. No, I’m not saying we live only for the present, but we have a strong bias in favor of the short-term instead of the long-term.

Those of us who have a much stronger Purpose typically enjoy a stronger sense of that Future Self. In essence, to them, it is easier to keep their eyes on the prize. (Back to our economics/finance terminology, a stronger sense of the Future You comes from having a much smaller discounting rate). In other words, a strong Purpose can be understood as considering the distant future as equally important, or even more important, than the present or near-future.

Let’s see how this works

Look again at the image at the top of this post.

You have two pictures of Future You: one that is healthy and fit, and one that is frail and, probably, suffering from some illness(es). The road to each Future You is a series of short-term actions, choices that happen every day, with their specific consequences:

Two images of Future You…

Although there is no absolute certainly about the outcome, we know for sure what the odds are:

Take a good, hard look at those two Future You. Can you see them well? Which do you want to really be Future You? I bet I know.

So what happens? Why is it still not a complete no-brainer to exercise regularly?

Well, each of us considers those futures against the present. It is a decision process in which you pit Present You against Future You. At least in terms of enjoyment:

If the future appears not important enough, you are likely to pick doing nothing.

Conversely, if the Future You is clear enough and important enough, your choice would be otherwise:

If Future You is “important” enough in your mind, you will act accordingly. Most of the time. Well, often enough.

That’s basically it. How well you can see Future You, and how you manage to keep Future You in mind on a daily basis, influences how you behave. How much you are eager to exercise regularly.

This works whether Future You is simply a healthy and active Old You, or an incredibly fit and muscular Two Years From Now You, or Winning A Race in 6 Months You. Future You is what you envision yourself to be like at some point in the future. Personally, the only "Future You" I think is truly worth having in mind, having as a Purpose, is Healthy And Active "Old You". Which should make You exercise regularly, and in a reasonable way…

Future You, which becomes the source of your Purpose, is not the only contributing factor to exercising regularly, as we’ll see next time. But it is a necessary beginning. Without it, you must fall back on motivation, or worse, on discipline.

The good news is that you can improve how Future You influences Present You. You need to look at Future You regularly.

So keep a picture of Future You where you can take a good look at it every day, just as you head out to exercise…

Look for my podcast by searching “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight” on the podcast app that you use. You’ll see a piece of my book cover.

If you really want to lose your body fat look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You'll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. 

There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $3.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans, or meal plans. Look for my book. at Amazon.com, bn.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

Your Health Insurance May Pay For Your Gym Membership?

Need to lose weight? You’re not alone. Talk to your doctor. You may be able to get free help through your health care plan under the Affordable Care Act.

Most health insurance plans, including all plans purchased through the Marketplace, now include obesity screening and counseling, with no copays or deductibles. When you go in for a physical, your doctor will usually check your weight and height. With those numbers, he or she can figure out your body mass index, or BMI. A BMI of 25 or higher is overweight. A BMI of 30 or more is obese.
People who are obese are more likely to get serious health problems such as heart disease, diabetes, and some cancers. Losing weight can lower your chances of getting any of those.

If your doctor finds that you fit the medical guidelines for obesity, you may get counseling sessions on diet and weight reduction. This may include one-on-one meetings, or you may get weight loss advice and support in a group such as Weight Watchers. Check with your insurance plan for more information.

The counseling sessions can help you change any unhealthy eating and exercise habits. That, in turn, can help you lose weight and lower the chance of health problems.

Under the Affordable Care Act, there is no exact definition of what obesity counseling must include. Coverage varies from plan to plan, so call your insurer to see what your policy will cover. If you get insurance through your job, you can also call your human resources department to check.

To help you get back to a healthy weight, your doctor may suggest a diet and exercise program. Most people will want to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy products. Choose lean meats and foods that are low in unhealthy fats, cholesterol, and added sugars. Exercise helps, too. Work your way up to 30 minutes most days.

If you have a lot of weight to lose, your doctor may suggest medication or surgery. The Affordable Care Act does not require health plans, including those purchased through the Marketplace, to cover this, but some do. Check your plan to see what’s available to you.

Doctors and insurance companies have an interest in seeing you lose fat and avoid diseases like Cancer and Diabetes. Before You try anything on your own, talk to your doctor or a dietitian.

Look for my podcast by searching “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight” on the podcast app that you use. You’ll see a piece of my book cover.

If you really want to lose your body fat look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You'll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. 

There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $3.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans, or meal plans. Look for my book. at Amazon.com, bn.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

 

Is Sitting The New Smoking?

It depends on who you talk to. I personally believe that when you sit for long periods of time you stop burning calories or at least slow down the process.
Now studies show that 8 hours of sitting, which applies mainly to office workers, is just as bad as smoking, and to go a step farther, if you're not exercising that also is just as bad for your health as smoking is.

When you see someone smoking, you might question “Why would you do that to yourself when you know it could kill you?” Do you react the same way when you know someone doesn’t exercise? You should. Not exercising is a problem that affects everyone in America because we have lost the need to walk. Walking is the exercise that will help all that ails you. It gets your blood pumping and good circulation is key to good health.

You wouldn’t dream of smoking (and if you do smoke, you’re likely trying to quit), so why poison yourself with inactivity? But many of us do. Nearly 80% of us don’t get the recommended amount of exercise. Many experts agree the inactivity epidemic is more concerning than the obesity epidemic. Far more people are inactive than obese, but because inactivity doesn't cause cancer then it isn't as important. 

The benefits of exercise are numerous and irrefutable. It helps prevent heart disease, diabetes, breast and colon cancer, dementia, depression, and more. If you exercise, chances are you’ll live a longer, healthier life. Period.

What’s so powerful about exercise? Take heart disease, for example. Heart disease is associated with inflammation in the body. Exercise is a natural inflammation fighter. When you move, your muscles send out anti-inflammatory chemicals.

Also, every time you get up and move, your blood sugar, cholesterol, and triglycerides improve. When you sit down, they get worse. It’s just about moving more. Most of us remember our grandparents and maybe they lived into their 90's, but in their generation, they walked a lot more and did more physical work, and probably had a lot less stress. More physical activity and less stress, maybe that's the secret to a long, happy life.

If you’re not active now, I’m sure it sounds overwhelming to start an exercise program. The good news is you can see health benefits with even a small amount of activity. Even taking a daily 5 -minute walk around the office will improve your health. Slowly build up from there.

Ultimately, you want your goal to be 30 minutes at least 5 days a week of moderate exercise. We’re talking about a brisk walk– hard enough that you can talk comfortably but not able to sing. But take your time getting there. Throw in resistance exercises a couple of days a week, and you’re on track.

If you’ve tried exercise before and didn’t lose weight, don’t be discouraged. You are still getting health benefits even if you’re not shedding weight. If you’re overweight but active and fit, you can expect to live as long and healthy as someone who is normal weight and fit. Even if you’re obese, being active helps you live a longer, healthier life than a normal-weight person who isn’t active. Losing weight is more about diet, so even if you're active and fit, you're not going to lose weight until you change your diet. Increasing your physical activity will make you a healthier person and losing weight will even make you healthier. I'm 70 years old and I don't take medications. My Doctor said I'm very healthy for my age, keep it up.

Think you’re too old for it to matter? Hardly. Regardless of your age, getting active has enormous benefits even in your 80s and beyond. We’re not just talking about living longer, but living better with a higher quality of life.

As British-American anthropologist Ashley Montagu once said, “The idea is to die young as late as possible.”

Look for my podcast by searching “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight” on the podcast app that you use. You’ll see a piece of my book cover.

If you really want to lose your body fat look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You'll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. 

There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $3.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans, or meal plans. Look for my book. at Amazon.com, bn.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

 

"Can you look older because you're eating crap? Absolutely."

I like this post from WebMD.com. It tells you the truth about what bad food choices can do to your health. 

“For example, eating too much sugar and processed carbohydrates (like some pasta, bread, and baked goods made with enriched flour) can lead to damage in your skin's collagen, which keeps your skin springy and resists wrinkles”, says Andrea Giancoli, MPH, RD. 

“What's more, these foods put your overall health at risk. They are tied to diseases like heart disease and diabetes”, she says.

Did you know that Obesity can cause heart damage without any symptoms? Other foods, like fruits and vegetables, are good for your body and your overall appearance. When you look good, you feel good and your body is working the way it was built to.

A person can be considered middle-aged even past 65 or even 70 by the condition of their body. Your body doesn’t know what the calendar is. Your body only knows that your not fully grown or that your are fully grown or that you're getting close to the “end of life”. And your body can determine this by the condition of your body. This is what is called your “biological age”. 

Aging is really not about how old you are in chronological years, aging is about how old you are in biological years. A study done in a university in New Zealand recently showed that out of the 1000 people in a study of people in the late 1930s, some had a biological age as high as 60, some of them have actually stopped aging and some had a biological age less than their chronological age.




You can’t reverse aging but the study shows that in some cases people have actually stopped aging. Yes, some of this may be caused by the genes you were born with, but most of these people have stopped aging because of their diet and activity levels.




Everyone is born with a different set of genes and some genes may be better then others, for instance we know that your genes depend a lot on the condition of your parents at the time you were conceived. As an adult goes through life his or her genes age along with the biological age. 




So genes your born with do play a factor in your biological age and that may be why some people in the study were found to have a biological age 20 years older than their actual age. But most of the aging process can be controlled by your diet and exercise.

Science doesn't know how long man can live. It only has a history to go by. Science and a team from Google are doing research now to try and determine if a man can live to age 500. Other scientists believe we can live to age 1000 in theory but I don't think any research is being done yet. No one really knows how long a man can live. 

Medicine may have it all wrong. Today Doctors are treating the medical problems the patient has, but now they think that they need to be preventing the diseases and illnesses that people could get. Prevention is the next step for medicine. So in theory, if we never get a disease or illness then how long could we live?




You don’t have to age, it’s mostly up to you. You can slow down or even stop the aging process if you want. You won’t stop aging forever but in the study, some of the adults did have a biological age younger than their chronological age. When your biological age is younger, your body stopped aging several years ago because of your lifestyle. If you are interested, you can calculate your biological age by looking on the internet and finding the formula. Just do a search Biological Age and you'll find several websites to help you. 

You can stop the aging process at any age if you take control of your diet and exercise. Losing body fat will make a big difference in your health. I have a friend about my age with a weight problem and his Doctor warned him he was pre-diabetic and would have to start taking insulin if he couldn't lose weight. My friend could remember when his father had to take insulin and he knew that wasn't for him. In 6 months he lost weight and was off his medications. At the age of 60, he was one happy guy. 

Look for my podcast by searching “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight” on the podcast app that you use. You’ll see a piece of my book cover.

If you really want to lose your body fat look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You'll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. 

There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $3.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans, or meal plans. Look for my book. at Amazon.com, bn.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

 

What You Eat Can Extend Your Life

Find out what foods you can eat to live healthier, longer lives.

By Joel Fuhrman, MD

A good post that emphasizes a good diet. This post first appeared on VeryWell.com.

We all have the ability to live healthier, stronger, and longer lives simply by eating the most nutritious foods for our bodies. The importance of good nutrition cannot be overstated. I have personally seen how an optimal diet can prevent and reverse disease. I have written books about the effects the right foods can have on such problems as heart disease,  high blood pressure, diabetes, allergies, asthma, autoimmune illnesses (including lupus), and headaches.

I firmly believe that few people can expect to have good health without paying attention to the consumption of high micronutrient foods. The latest scientific advances in nutritional research continue to provide evidence in support of these facts.

The latest study cited poor eating habits as the most significant risk factor for premature death worldwide. It found diet was the primary factor responsible for the greatest number of premature deaths starting in 2000 and up to the most recent data for 2013, accounting for 11.3 million deaths worldwide in 2013.

In recent decades, the American diet has undergone a transformation that has put disease-causing refined carbohydrates, oils, and animal products at the center of every meal, with natural plant foods playing only a minor role. This dietary shift became apparent when researchers looked at the data. As new parts of the world continue to adopt these eating habits, diet is becoming a larger burden on health and lifespan all over the world.

What Foods Place You at High-Risk?

When researchers looked at some of the dietary risk factors individually, they found that between 2000 and 2013 there was a global increase in the numbers of deaths associated with the following factors:

• Low Fruit Consumption
• High Sodium Intake
• Low Fiber Diet
• Low Consumption of Nuts and Seeds
• Diet High in Processed and Red Meats

Based on the above dietary factors, it should be no surprise that there was an increase in the number of deaths over this same time period associated with high blood pressure, high BMI or body mass index, and high fasting blood glucose rates.

The Good News

The study didn’t yield all the bad news. Mortality due to the consumption of trans fat and secondhand smoke declined during that time and, as the authors pointed out, each of the risk factors has the potential to be eliminated or reduced in our diets. Already we are seeing a stronger emphasis on whole foods, clean eating, and a wider interest in more thoughtful food selection. Our individual choices have a huge potential to positively improve our health.

The trends the study spotlighted are reversible, and the deaths associated with a poor diet are avoidable. It took many years, but today everyone knows that smoking causes lung cancer and as a result, tobacco use is declining and so are the negative health effects associated with its use. The data suggests that this is beginning to occur with trans fat, too. We are certainly not there, yet, but we are moving toward a time when processed meats, commercial baked goods, and sugar-sweetened beverages will be viewed by everyone as dangerous.

I encourage everyone to eat a nutrient-dense, plant-rich diet of greens, colorful vegetables, beans, nuts, seeds, and some fruit. Make salad the main meal. Eat big salads and lots of tomatoes, onion, raw and cooked greens, and mushrooms. Until everyone learns to avoid processed food, excessive animal products, and oils preventable diseases will continue to plague us. A diet that delivers a broad array of micronutrients via a wide spectrum of healthy foods is the most satisfying and the most healthful. 

Look for my podcasts "How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight" on your favorite app.

If you really want to lose your body fat then look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You'll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. 

There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $1.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans, or meal plans. Look for my book. at Amazon.com, BN.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com, just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page.