Better Health Information

My New Year's resolution is to lose the extra weight that I am carrying and achieve better health. I know that it is very difficult to lose weight, I have tried over the last 5 years to maintain a healthy weight and have not succeeded. I need some special motivation and I think being public about it, by keeping track of my progress on this site, will help me achieve the better health and weight loss I am after. Starting Jan 1 2010 I will describe my efforts for each day until I have completed my path to better health. I also hope that perhaps my writing it here might help others do the same.

The health of the human race has steadily been declining for about 100 years. With the advent of the modern age, where convenience is more important than health, we are becoming a completely different type of animal. We no longer need to exert as much energy to secure a supply of food as it gives to us, thereby keeping us lean. All we need to do now is travel to the store in our automobiles, buy sugar ladened, chemical rich, processed food that makes us all unhealthy, obese and undernourished.

There is a small movement of people in the western world who are aware that better health is directly related to some very simple solutions. Proper diet being a very important one, minimizing your exposure to toxins in both food and your environment and getting enough exercise.

Proper Diet

There are so many ideas of what constitutes a proper diet that if you took 10 people aside on the street, they would each have a different idea of what constitutes a diet that is healthy. There have been many that have gained recognition over time. Each one has it's own values but the basis of a proper diet is the idea that we as humans should be vegetarian and eat a diet based on vegetable matter.

There are variations on the vegetarian theme even. Veganism is defined as someone who avoids any animal products altogether. For some this even means not wearing shoes that are made from leather, as this is a product of an animal. There are those who believe that eating only raw food is the healthiest diet. While raw food is rich in enzyme content, heat created while cooking kills the enzyme content of foods, it is difficult to get a balanced diet from raw foods, though it is not impossible. The most widely understood version of the vegetarian diet is one that includes dairy products. This makes it easier to get the elusive B12, something only found in fish, dairy and meat.

Ultimately the best diet is one that works for you. I will try to flush out all the possibilities for you over the next 6 months as I return to the ways of my past. You see, I have strayed from a proper diet over the last 10 years. I used to be very conscious of both my health and what I put into my body. It's not that I have strayed from eating well, in fact I eat probably too well, but I no longer practice a diet that is best for my health and because of that I have gained a lot of weight and lost some ground on the superb physical health I had in my youth.

Minimizing Toxin Exposure

It is important to take into consideration that there are things in our environment that cause us to become extremely toxic. Foods introduce chemicals to our bodies that were never meant to be there for instance it is said that when you die, it takes 3 times as long for your body to decompose then it did 100 years ago because of the build-up of preservatives from food. Pesticides, herbicides, non-stick coatings, waterproofing, fireproofing, additives, sprays, cleaning products, pharmaceuticals, the list goes on and on. Everywhere we turn our bodies are bombarded by chemicals. All we can do is to minimize our exposure to these chemicals in our day to day living and hope that the concentrations don't exceed what is healthy in our bodies.

If you feel you are being poisoned by toxins in your environment there are things you can do. First you must remove yourself from the toxins, like quitting smoking, and then you need to cleanse your body to rid it of the build-up. I will be cleansing myself as part of this return to health and I will try to provide all of the best possible options for this and let you know which of the cleanses I did were effective or not.

Getting Exercise

Seems pretty simple to say but getting exercise is one of the most important elements of better health. Without exercise the body goes through changes that compound the problem. Everyone needs exercise, not everyone needs a lot of exercise to be healthy. I am going to begin a regime of some exercises that I have done in the past that will make it easier for me to lose weight and achieve better health. I'll let you know how it goes.