If you pull up information about weight loss online, you’re going to get so many results back that it can easily be overwhelming. What’s worse is that when you check out each of the results, what’s being said is going to contradict the information another site says.
The truth is that there’s a lot of hype out there about losing weight, getting fit and having the kind of body that you want to have. As you get older, your body is going to change.
But it’s a lie that you have to accept an out of shape body as your destiny – because you don’t. You may have been one of the ones who has always believed a certain way when it comes to weight loss.
But if you want to lose weight and get fit the healthy way so that you stop looking and feeling older, it’s time to let go of some damaging beliefs that could be sabotaging your efforts.
Stop Believing the Low-Fat Myth
It’s important that you eat a healthy diet that provides your body with all of the nutrients that it needs to function. Some information that you see spread around will tell you that if you want to be healthy, you have to change the way you eat and should only eat foods that are low in fat.
That’s a huge myth that can have some pretty bad side effects if you listen to it. Low fat diets can age you. Low fat diets can damage your body. Your body can’t absorb nutrients and vitamins that you need without fat.
You must have a certain amount of fat every single day in your diet plan or you’re shortchanging your health. There are a lot of reasons why you need to eat fat. The first reason is that fat does a lot of work in your body to keep you strong and healthy.
Fat is used to help nutrients do their work. Without it, you don’t get what you need. So then your body’s immune system isn’t at its optimal performance level – because it’s one of the things in your body that works with fat consumption.
The second reason that you need fats is because you’ll have problems with how you feel if you don’t. Have you been struggling with feeling kind of down when you’re eating low fat?
It’s not you – it’s what you’re eating. Or rather, what you’re not eating. You have to have fat in your diet in order to fight off feelings that contribute to down moods. A diet that’s low in fat can make you feel sad because you’re not giving your body the foods that it needs in order to help your brain have what it needs to function the right way.
Another reason not to go low fat is because eating a low fat diet can actually increase your risks of getting certain cancers. How many times have you heard of someone who eats healthy, exercises, keeps their body weight within a normal range and still struggles with all kinds of health issues?
The culprit behind that could be that they’re not getting the fat they need that can impede some cancers. Diets that are based on low fat eating can be bad for your heart.
When you eat following a low fat plan, it’s true that your LDL level does drop. But it’s not the only thing that drops. That good cholesterol, your HDL, heads the same way.
It goes low as well. When your HDL heads south, your body is at risk for a host of health problems – including problems keeping your heart healthy. While low fat diets sound good in theory, the trouble can also be what’s in those low fat foods.
Many low fat foods are packed with things that can impact your health negatively – like too much sodium. Eating the low fat meals can impact your appearance, too.
You’ll look and feel older – both on the inside and outside of your body. So look for smart ways to eat like they teach in the online course Old School New Body by Steve and Becky Holman.
Exercise Can Be Bad for Your Body
Many people exercise to get fit, stay fit and slow the effects of aging. But they can be damaging their health and speeding up the aging process without even realizing it.
With everything that you’ve read about how great exercise is for your body, it can be disturbing to think that you can actually be introducing harm into your life and causing aging to your body instead – but it’s the truth.
When you go out for a walk, you’ll inevitably see someone out jogging or running. You may also notice that some of these people have support devices on some areas of their body.
That’s because exercise is not kind to the body, especially where bones meet. Repetition in movement – especially when you do it often and for hours at a time – is one of the easiest ways that you can hurt the joints in your body.
When the joints in your body are damaged, it causes premature aging to that area and knee replacement or other joint replacements could very well be in your future if your joints are being abused through the wrong exercises now.
Some people believe in exercise so much that they push their body beyond its ability to cope. They think that if exercising a half an hour a day is good, then exercising for an hour must be even better – but that’s not true.
The key to successful weight loss, to successfully shaping your body and slowing how you age is found in cutting back on the exercise you’ve been doing if you’re the type of person who works out hard.
Exercise is a lesson in body stress. Because when you exercise, you’re putting a great deal of stress on your body. Everything from your tendons to your joints, to your organs are feeling the impact of your workout.
You might assume that you’re being proactive for your health, that you’re giving your body good health benefits. That assumption is only correct if you’re exercising the right way, in a way that doesn’t speed up the aging process for your body.
Did you know that exercise can affect your mood? You might have heard that it releases those feel good hormones in your brain and stimulates your mood. You would be correct.
However, your body has that flight or fight response whenever you have to deal with stress. You may not realize this, but exercise puts a lot of stress on your body.
You feel pain if you run when you don’t feel your best. You feel pain when you exercise and your body is hurting. So what happens is that your body reacts to this stress.
Not once or twice – but every single time that you give your body exercise stress, it’s reacting. This reaction is being dealt with by your adrenal glands. After a while, your adrenal glands can’t keep up with this constant stress drain.
You have to learn how to exercise in ways that do not bring stress to your body. You’ve learned how exercise and diet go hand in hand and that you shouldn’t just eat healthy without working out.
But working out can be one of the biggest diet busters there is. That’s because when you work out, your body burns up those calories, your glucose level drops and suddenly you have to eat to keep from hitting the floor.
Now if you couple that workout with a low fat diet, you’re not getting enough nutrients for your body to stay healthy while you get in shape. Food is fuel and when you exercise, you’re burning up that fuel so it has to be replaced.
Exercise is actually one of the fastest ways that you can fall off the diet wagon. You want to learn how to exercise in such a way that it gives your body great benefits and slows down the way that your body ages.
If you look at the Old School New Body program, they have some great tips that can guide you in this area.
Don’t Let Your Mind Keep You Out of Shape
Some beliefs are universal simply because they’re sayings that have been passed down over time. There’s no truth in them, but because these beliefs have been around for decades, everyone automatically swallows them.
One of those beliefs is that aging means being out of shape. There are jokes about ‘middle age spread’ and jokes about all of the aches and pains associated with aging.
You’ve seen photos of men with beer guts and shirts that don’t quite cover that supposed middle age weight gain. You’ve seen women wearing the polyester pants suits and sporting plenty of extra weight on their hips, thighs and buttocks.
You might have noticed that older people look out of shape. As the aging process takes its toll, what happens is that people start to accept in their mind that being out of shape is simply what happens at that point in life.
But it’s a complete myth that no one has to put up with. Growing older doesn’t mean that you have to accept being fat. True, it’s best to get in and stay in shape while you’re younger so that you have fewer health issues to deal with when you do age.
But just because you’re older, it doesn’t mean that it’s too late. It’s never too late to slow the aging process within your body that can go along with being out of shape.
And it’s never too late to change the outer appearance of your body. So the first thing you need to do right now is stop accepting age as an excuse. Because that’s all it is – an excuse.
You’ve heard the phrase, “You can do anything you put your mind to” – and it’s true. That’s because your mind controls what you believe about yourself, about your life and about your body.
If you think that you’re going to live out the rest of your life out of shape, out of breath on exertion and feeling old, then you will. On the other hand, if you take control of what you believe, you can change your physical appearance.
All you have to do if you want proof of that is to do an online search of middle aged people who changed their appearance. You’ll see thousands of people who made the decision that enough was enough.
Age had no bearing on them being fat or fit. You may even come across the stories of the woman who became a bodybuilder in her mid fifties. She wasn’t in shape when she started, but she made up her mind to be.
Today, she’s in her 70s and looks better than many 20 something year olds do – and she’s still going strong.
Why Water Really Is Important
Remember how when you were a child, your parents always pushed you to drink water because they said it was good for you? When you became an adult, your doctor gave you the same advice.
It turns out that the advice to drink plenty of water is some of the best advice you were given. The standard advice tells you that in order to get enough water, you have to drink eight glasses every day.
Those glasses should be a minimum of eight ounces of the healthy liquid. But that’s not exactly correct. How much water you need depends on if you’re active or not, if it’s hot or cold outside and how hydrated you already are.
You’re just not going to need the same amount of water every single day and your water intake isn’t going to be what everyone else’s is. The best rule of thumb to follow is to drink what’s best for your body.
Water helps your organs do the jobs that they’re meant to do. Without enough water, you can get dehydrated. Your kidneys work too hard and can become overloaded.
Your skin gets dry. Dehydration makes you look older – because without enough water, your skin doesn’t stay smooth and soft looking. Not only does dehydration make you look older, but it can make you feel older.
You can develop headaches from dehydration. Your energy level can drop and you can even start to experience mood changes. But the most important issue with not getting enough water is that you will have a tougher time losing weight.
Without enough water, your body does its best to hold on to what it does have. So you might experience bloating. Besides bloating, not getting enough water limits your body’s ability to get rid of fat.
It’s your liver that’s your biggest weight loss ally. So you want to make sure that it has what it needs to do its job – and that means making sure you stay hydrated. Your liver works hard to eliminate fat.
That’s why you want to take care about what you put in your body, especially alcohol. There’s a reason that people who consume a lot of alcohol develop beer bellies.
Alcohol ends up being dealt with by the liver. The liver works hard to get rid of alcohol, but fat is created within the liver as a result of alcohol. So then it can’t burn fat the way it was meant to.
You want your liver to do the job of burning fat rather than alcohol, so make it easy for this organ to do its job.
Forget Anti-Aging Products
While there are some creams on the market that can minimize the effects of aging by reducing the appearance of wrinkles, the truth is that there are no anti-aging creams or supplements that can actually slow the process on their own.
You really need a program that will teach you how to look younger by showing you the proper way and the right length of time to exercise. You need to learn how to follow a nutritional eating plan that not only slows the aging process – but also shows you how to eat in a way that’s best for you.
You want to learn how to lose weight and also how to shape up your body so that you look years younger. And you also want a program that will give you plenty of tips on the anti-aging process.
So look for programs like Old School New Body that will give you all of this information. Remember that regardless of which program you choose, the most important thing is that you take control of how your body looks and feels.
Don’t be a passenger in your own life when it comes to your health.
