Truth! If you are not happy with your life, your weight, your lack of success at anything you have a choice to make. You can choose to continue along the same tiresome and difficult path you are currently on, or you can choose to do all that you can in order to change your life for the better. Life is indeed all about the choices we make, you will never improve any aspect of your life when you are too apathetic to learn what it is you need to do in order to move forward for the life you might envy. People complain all the time about not being able to lose weight, but are totally apathetic towards understanding how their nutritional habits keep them fat. There are many who have never learned anything at all about nutrition, and there are others who do understand but just want to be able to eat what they want because it tastes good and gives them a temporary mental boost. The people in the latter category are typically willfully ignorant of how foods affect their bodies. They just do not care that much until they have to go out and buy larger size clothing to wear, or when they are too embarrassed to wear a bathing suit at the beach or pool.
If you are at a point where you truly want a healthier and leaner body, then you must come to understand how your nutrition affects your body. You can try all the gimmicks and fad diets in the world, but the bottom line is, you will not successfully keep off any of your lost weight if you do not adopt healthy nutritional habits for the rest of your life. A diet will typically have a stopping point when you achieve your desired weight, being lean, fit and healthy is a lifetime endeavor which requires a change of lifestyle. You have to work at it, and understand that being apathetic is not going to get or keep you there. You have to understand that as long as you eat crap foods, your hormonal balance will be out of kilter. As long as your nutritional habits keep your hormones out of balance, you are going to suffer from being overweight or obese.
The hormonal effects of your diet.
When you think of hormones does your mind automatically go to sex? Do you understand or know there is more to the sex hormones estrogen and testosterone than fueling your sex drive? Do you know these two hormones play a vital role in maintaining your health too? Are you aware of the other hormones in your body and how your nutrition, or lack thereof, affects your wellbeing?
As significant as they may be, testosterone and estrogen are but two hormones that come as standard issue to all living organisms. Through our work, we have discovered how ignorant a lot of people are when it comes to the crucial role hormones play in their bodies. Most never even give them even a brief consideration until their hormones have affected their health when they are out of balance. Your nutrition has a direct impact on your hormonal balances and these hormones have a direct impact on virtually everything your body does. Your hormones affect your blood sugar along with your basic survival mechanisms involved in stress, fear and even love. Consume an out of balance diet, and you can expect your hormones to become out of balance, this a simple truth for all.
Your body has what is known as the endocrine system which could be thought of as a communication system for your hormonal responses to stress, fear, love and other emotions. Endocrine hormonal responses can be considered very similar to that of microwave towers or or a fiber optic network. In your endocrine system, action begins when a secreting gland dispatches a message in the form of a hormone into your bloodstream, which is your body’s version of a fiber optic network. This hormonal message travels through the bloodstream to reach a distant target cell. The cell then receives the message and responds with the appropriate action that has been ordered. For example, insulin is a powerful hormone that your pancreas secretes into your bloodstream. The insulin goes to your liver along with the cells of your muscles. The insulin orders these cells and your liver to snatch glucose from your bloodstream and to store it for later use. As your insulin levels get greater, your blood-glucose levels begin to fall. Once this happens, your brain which requires glucose to function, calls out for more of it. If your brain does not get the glucose it requires, it begins to tune out. This is what we call hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar. You will feel this as a mental fatigue. This is why you crash after eating foods full of simple carbs. You know, like when you have pasta for lunch and then are feeling a bad need for a nap a couple of hours later. If you are carb addicted, you know full well about these afternoon crashes. I can tell you that I know this too well myself as I am carb addicted too.
So, what is it that prevents the liver from replenishing the bloodstream with your body’s stored glucose when hypoglycemia strikes?
High levels of insulin prevent this!
Everyone it seems has heard of insulin, but insulin has a sidekick that is equally as important. Insulin and its sidekick keep each other in balance by having totally opposite physiological effects. Your body’s hormones are not lone Rambo’s, nope, they are almost always paired with with another. Balance is a must if you want to be healthy, fit and trim. You cannot have it any other way, no matter how much you might wish it to be. This balance is going to come from nutrition and exercise! Sitting on your couch eating doughnuts is not going to get nor keep you in balance.
The other hormone that is paired with insulin in glucagon. While insulin drives down your blood sugar level, glucagon has the opposite effect of increasing it. The balancing of these two opposing physiological effects allows your body to maintain a tight control of your blood sugar levels that keeps your brain functioning properly. When you allow the balance of insulin and glucagon to get out of kilter your blood sugar levels are going to be out of whack. If your insulin levels become too high, or your glucagon level too low, you end up with hypoglycemia.
Often, people who eat a calorie dense, low nutrition diet full of simple carbs and refined sugars, they become insulin resistant. When you become insulin resistant, your blood sugar levels remain too high despite high levels of insulin because your target cells no longer respond to the insulin. Insulin resistance and the resulting high insulin levels (hyperinsulinemia) lead to the accumulation of excess body fat. Prolonged hyperinsulinemia can, and will, promote diabetes and speed up the development of heart disease.
Is this something you can afford to happen?
Is your life not worth more than the junk foods you consume?
If you cannot afford healthy foods, just how the hell are you going to afford high medical bills?
It is a fools game to consider this all to be just a academic discussion of hormonal biochemistry. This is a topic that should be understood by all, especially if you have brought children into this world. The foods we eat have an exceptionally powerful effect on all of our body’s hormonal responses. Once you understand this, it would be foolish to not consider the value of your nutritional habits. Food is far more than calories to fuel your body or a mechanism to stop your stomach from grumbling. Food is one of the most powerful drugs you can ever encounter. If your diet is out of balance, your body is out of balance. If your body is out of balance, then your health and well being are going to suffer. Because insulin drives down blood sugar and glucagon restores it, the ongoing critical balance between these two hormones are necessary for healthy survival. Bear in mind, the release of insulin is stimulated by carbohydrates, especially those like bread, pasta and foods with added sugars that are high on the glycemic index. The release of the insulin balancing hormone glucagon is stimulated by your consumption of protein. If your glucagon levels remain low, and you cannot replenish your blood sugar levels from the stored carbohydrates in the liver, your brain is going to tell you that bag of corn chips, that bowl of ice cream or candy bar looks very enticing. You are going to get that “hangry” craving for junk foods. While these crap junk foods provide immediate energy to your brain, they do nothing but restart the vicious cycle of raised insulin and low glucagon which places you into carbohydrate hell. These cravings are hormonally driven and have nothing to do with your will power, or lack thereof. As long as you are stuck in this diet related cycle, you will simply put, remain fat.
If you are of moderate intelligence, you are only being a fool if you remain apathetic about your nutritional needs.
Only because we have encountered this; you cannot tell me you care about losing weight if you are going to be willfully ignorant of what it takes to not only lose it, but to keep it off.
Apathy will get you nowhere, no matter how much you might protest to the contrary.