So you want to be fit and healthy?
First of all, ask yourself why you are not already fit and healthy. Mankinds natural state is to be fit and healthy, the modern, high incidence, diseases of which obesity and diabetes belong, are just that, modern diseases. So also is just about every other common, high incidence disease that occurs today. They are all modern diseases (at least the high incidence is). Why?
Mankind has never had as much knowledge as we have today. With all the modern tools, techniques, chemicals, brain power, records, communication and world-wide collaboration that we have at our disposal, why do we have all these modern diseases?
Perhaps some better questions would be:
- When did did the high incidence of these diseases start?
- When did we first have to use vitamins?
- When did food supplements become necessary?
- When did we have to devise exercise equipment?
- When did ...?
I'm sure your beginning to get the picture. It's modern living that's causing the modern diseases, including obesity and our general unfitness.
Industry has a lot to answer for, stress, pollution, working hours and bad practices. Why is it allowed?
Why does the food industry destroy all the nutrition in our food? Why has it changed our tastes from natural healthy food to "tasty" unhealthy and unnatural food.
Why does the drugs industry control diseases rather than cure them? Why does it produce supplements and vitamins and essential additives that we cannot do without? Why is it allowed to feed us misinformation, particularly in the form of studies? Did you know that if they want to sell something, they keep doing studies until one or two of them produce favourable results? Out of the, possibly, hundred or more studies performed on a particular product, they'll only publish the the one or two that put their product in a good light, the rest are discarded.
Is inactivity the problem, especially with obesity?
Studies with children have shown that overweight causes inactivity, inactivity does not cause overweight.
Jump back in time a hundred thousand years or so, the late stone age. These people were fit and healthy. How do I know? If they were not fit and healthy, they were dead, simple as that. Now try to imagine what their daily routine would be. Do you think they would do a lot of physical activity? Myself, I would doubt it, they really wouldn't have that much to do.
I'd imagine they would be really active when they were hunting or being hunted, that would be about their greatest exertion. perhaps they did a lot of walking, maybe they played a lot, I really don't know about that, but contrast their lifestyle to someone living today.
So why is obesity on the increase?
If it's not inactivity, then it must be the food.
I know that I've written this article in a peculiar fashion, that was deliberate. I've written a lot about health and fitness, mostly spelling things out so people can better understand the problems, but I get the impression that only a few readers really get it. So I came up with this, more questions than answers, hope it tells you something.
For those of you still with me, if obesity is your problem, change your eating habits to natural nutritious food as unprocessed as possible and increase your physical activity, do some resistance training to strengthen your bones and joints and build some muscle because losing weight means losing body fat, muscle mass and bone density. It's only the fat you want to lose. Here is an article that explains the importance of
losing fat, muscle mass and bone density in more detail.
If a lack of fitness is your problem, increase your physical activity. Steady state exercises like power walking, jogging, running, aerobics (cardio exercises) is NOT the way to go. Man was designed much like the rest of the animal kingdom, to exert ourselves in bursts followed by periods of rest. If walking is your thing, then try changing your speed every couple of minutes. If it's jogging, then sprint for a hundred yards, jog the next hundred or until your heart rate and breathing have recovered, then sprint the next hundred and so on. Whatever activity you choose, vary the intensity, you will get a greater benefit in a much shorter time.
