September 25, 2009

• It’s been a while. There’s been a lot and yet at the same time not much goin on with me. Right now though I’m just writing something for myself, although you guys are free to read it.

  I’ve been doing a lot of research. I’m not very healthy right now, and even though there’s a good chance the weight gain is caused by my hormonal imbalance, stress, or numerous other things, there’s also a good chance its just because I really don’t take care of myself.

  So, like I said, been doin a bunch of research and this is just gonna be a compilation of the health tips that make the most sense to me. No diet bullshit, no crazy hour a day workouts, just a few facts about the human body and how our bodies work, and my opinion on some things, that I think will be able to make me healthier. And anyone else, I guess, haha. Yes it is mostly, if not completely, about what people eat and how people exercise, because to be completely honest, moderating what you eat and how you exercise is the only way you can lose weight without surgery, in my opinion

  I’m still researching right now, and writing this thing out in OpenOffice (yayy, I love OpenOffice~!), so who knows how long it’ll take. It’s… 7:55 right now. I’ve been up all night, quite literally. Been researching this since about 1 am. Well to be honest I’ve been researching this for weeks now, on and off, but today I compiled the things I found and double checked stuff. A lot of this is plain common sense as well.

  Anyways, here goes. It’s gonna be kinda long, so I’m splitting it in two parts, the first one is about dietary needs. The other part will probably come tomorrow or the day after, it’ll be about exercise.

  - – - – - –

  Dietary needs:

  First and most important is WATER. After all, our bodies are 60-70% water on average. We need water to be able to digest food, absorb nutrients, detoxify our system, keep our immune system working correctly, and important to the whole point of this – burn fat and build muscle. Water can cut down unhealthy snacking  as well (now, I believe that snacking a couple of times a day is good but we’ll get to that later..) because a lot of the times when you think you are hungry your body is actually just dehydrated. It can also keep you more energized during the day. Dehydration will completely kill any chance of losing weight or maintaining a healthy weight because when you are dehydrated your body interprets it as a state of shock. It moves its focus to getting water and stops doing other things – like burning body fat for energy, which is why drinking enough water will increase how energetic you are. Obviously, dehydration can lead to death.

  The minimum amount of water we should intake daily is 1 litre, or 33.8 ounces. That’s the bare minimum. From what I’ve seen the best amount is much higher – around 80 ounces or so. I know I sure don’t drink that much water anymore, although I used to when I was younger.

  Now, if you have really healthy kidneys you can’t really drink too much water overall. Well, you can, but it’d be pretty hard. You would have to drink more than 720 ounces a day. 480 if you plan on sleeping for 8 hours.  To put it in perspective, 720 ounces of water is just over 5 and a half gallons. 480 ounces is 3.75 gallons.
  Too much water can cause imbalances in electrolytes and also, if you don’t have enough sodium intake it can swell your body’s cells and rupture them, causing you to get really sick. If your kidneys aren’t healthy, drinking even just a couple ounces more than what they can handle can give you water intoxication. Now this “too much” is dependent on how much water per hour your kidneys can process. Someone with extremely healthy kidneys can drink about 30 ounces an hour. The average person can drink about 20 to 25 ounces an hour. Drinking too much water too fast can kill anyone. So even though you need lots of water, drink it in moderation.

  That’s gonna be a key thing here. Everything in moderation.

  Okay, next is FIBER.

  Dietary fiber is totally and completely underrated. Sure, people talk about needing more fiber all the time but I think a lot of people don’t pay attention, because not a lot of them know how important it is to our bodies. Dietary fiber regulates your blood sugar levels to help keep them more even, because it aids water in turning glucose to gel, making it slower to dissolve – which leads to helping prevent diabetes. It lowers both your overall cholesterol and your LDL cholesteral (the bad kind), thus, can reduce the risk of heart disease. Fiber can also speed the passage of foods through the digestive system once they have been digested, and regulate the pH levels in your intestines, which reduces the risk of colon cancer. (My Mema had colon cancer, so I’m at risk already. Sheesh.) It can also help prevent appendicitis, gallstones, hemorrhoids, varicose veins and blood clots.

  Getting enough fiber can help you eat less because foods high in fiber make you feel more full (fuller??) faster, and slows the actual digestion process which makes you feel full for longer periods of time. Because soluble fiber turns into a gel when it’s dissolved in water, it also helps your body absorb less calories and might prevent some amount of fat absorption.

  I honestly think it would be hard to eat too much fiber, our bodies need about 20-30 grams a day and unless you’re eating things like high fiber bars and such, most high fiber foods only have between 5-9 ounces per serving. (if you want a list of high fiber foods, their serving size, and how much fiber they have per serving go here: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/high-fiber-foods/NU00582 ) However, you can have too much fiber in your diet, especially if you don’t drink enough water. It can cause gas, bloating, diarrhea, intestinal blockage, and it can even prevent your body’s absorption of nutrients. Some measure of gas is common when increasing your fiber, though, as is looser stool. So just because you suddenly have gas and a little bit of diarrhea doesn’t mean you have too much. There’s no real specific amount that I can find on how much is too much, but you probably shouldn’t intake more than 100 grams a day.

  Now, when switching from a low fiber diet to a high fiber diet you shouldn’t just start eating 25 grams of fiber a day, especially if you only usually eat foods with little or no fiber. Up your intake slowly, like only 3-5 grams more than your normal level, and go up 3 grams every 2-3 days, is what I would suggest. Too much will make you sick – all those symptoms I gave earlier of having too much fiber will happen to you (only more mildly) since your body wont be able to handle it because of having to adjust to a huge amount of fiber so suddenly. It will not be able to process so much more bulk than it is used to. Again, moderation.

  I’m not gonna tell you specific things to eat or how to eat them or when to eat them. Everyones bodies process things differently. Some people are fine eating three big meals a day, others need to eat five or six small meals a day. Personally I am working for something in between, healthy snacks between meals to curb hunger and keep my blood sugar level – things like apple slices and peanut butter, or string cheese, or non-buttered popcorn – and smaller meals about four times a day. I think that snacking in between meals is a good way to keep from gorging yourself all in one sitting, and in my opinion its easier for the body to digest smaller amounts of food more often, then large amounts of food all at once, less often.

  Those are the most important things other than common sense healthy eating – McDonalds every day for lunch certainly isn’t going to help keep you healthy.

  Now for a couple of don’ts:

  If you are gonna take vitamin and mineral supplements, don’t take them without food. Ever. Period. (this is unless your doctor says otherwise, in that case go ahead, he or she knows better than I do.) When you take pills like that without having food in your body, your system isn’t prepared for it, and won’t be able to digest them and absorb the nutrients properly.  And large amounts of certain things can mess with your digestive system, if they are on their own. Eat something beforehand even if it’s just a piece of toast or fruit. That lets your body start digesting something natural, and the pills can be digested along with that.
  Diet Pills don’t work. They are expensive and useless. I’m not talking about natural supplements meant to enhance a plan to get healthy, that you use along proper eating habits and exercise. I’m talking about those miracle cure fat-burning diet pills. Don’t waste your money.

  Next, absolutely do NOT starve yourself. Don’t diet. I’m being completely serious here, dieting is the worst thing you can do if you are trying to lose weight or stay healthy. It’s the one way to sabotage any plans you have for changing your lifestyle to a healthier one. And I’m not talking about simply balancing what you eat and watching to make sure you have enough nutrients. That isn’t a diet.

  So, you eat too much. You can change that without a diet. Drastically changing your eating habits is gonna confuse your body. When your body is used to using a certain amount of calories to run itself, and you drastically drop that amount, it hoards them. Skipping meals, not eating, only eating half what you used to – or less. Those will all make you gain weight in the long run, I guarantee it. I know this from experience. When your body lacks what it needs or what it is used to, it hoards those calories and that fat, especially when you skip meals. It saves them up so that in case you skip another meal, or in case your next meal is lacking in what it is used to, it can use that extra fat and calories to keep you running. Especially if you are doing any sort of exercise that you aren’t used to. You’ll lose weight for a while, and then gain it all back plus more. If you are starting to exercise when you haven’t done so before, or are changing your regimen, you actually need to eat a little bit more than normal.

  If you want to cut down on the amount you eat, especially if you are compulsive eater, the way to do it is gradually. Get your body used to eating just a little bit less at a time, until you are eating a healthier amount of food. If you can’t do it on your own have a friend help you, and have him/her watch to make sure that you do decrease the amount and that you do it gradually enough. Healthier does not mean a salad and a piece of fruit once a day, and ‘meal’ shakes or bars for the other meals. Your body cannot survive with just that. I can’t give anyone a specific amount, because every person is different – what I eat daily is probably almost twice what my sister eats. She doesn’t need that much every day because her body works differently and is much smaller than mine. However, I need less than my dad, who’s taller than me and who is also a male (duh). Males and females have slightly different requirements, especially because on average men are larger than women, they have more mass to provide energy and nutrients to.

  Okay, the second don’t is sports drinks and energy drinks. Don’t drink them all the time. Or really that often at all.

  I’m guilty of the last, I absolutely love Monster energy drinks. But, I don’t drink it very often, partially because my body reacts in the opposite way as most peoples do, large amounts of caffeine put me to sleep. I’ve upped my tolerance so that I can actually drink a can of XXL without going to sleep but it used to be I couldn’t even drink half of a normal can without passing out. (Remember what I said earlier about people’s bodies working differently? Prime example.) Anyways, I also don’t drink it very often because theres a crapload of sugar in them and even if I didn’t have problems with my blood sugar, that isn’t too good for anyone. Plus, caffeine is actually pretty highly addictive and your body will get to where you need larger and larger amounts of it just to function. Withdrawal headaches don’t go away for days, sometimes more, and the firt sign of caffeine brings it all back, and if you stop taking it the cycle just repeats.  It really really sucks. (yes, I am speaking from experience. I didn’t even get addicted to energy drinks or coffee, just regular caffeinated sodas)

  Now with sports drinks, their problem is electrolytes. If you constantly drink sports drinks that have electrolytes in them your body will start to depend on the sports drinks and stop making its own. Basically its saying “Hey, lookit here!! Something is giving me all this stuff and I don’t have to waste energy making it myself, wow, that’s awesome!” It’s almost like an addiction, I guess. It gets to where your body completely stops making them. If you only drink sports drinks when you are doing heavy exercise or sports – they really aren’t too bad for you. But they are so common and popular that a lot of people drink them all the time, instead of only drinking them while doing sports or exercise, which is what the drinks were created for. They are meant to keep you hydrated during workouts, help replenish the sweat your body loses and be more flavorful than regular water. Not as a beverage to drink with every meal.

  Soda and concentrated fruit drinks aren’t really that good for you either, if you drink them all the time. More moderation.

  Whew, okay. I’ve said what I think are the most important things regarding the diet part of staying healthy.

  If you noticed I didn’t mention anything about low-carb or calorie counting – it’s because they are stupid and don’t work. Your body needs carbohydrates to function. Carbohydrates give a human body the energy it needs in order to survive and provide basic functions. Yes, you can have too much. but like I said earlier, a drastic change isn’t gonna help, it’s just going to freak your body out and confuse it, and in the end make you gain weight. Now with calories.. Well a calorie is how much heat it takes to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water, one degree higher. It’s basically a measurement of how much energy you can get from those carbohydrates in the food you just ate. It isn’t anything bad.

  Anyways, I’m done with this half. I just finished editing it for the third time. It’s been quite a long time, I got distracted a couple of times,  (plus I have a page of the next part written as well) and took a break to eat some breakfast, though. So it’s all good.

  • 11:57 am
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