Reverse Obesity By… Asking This One Simple Question
By Ivan Nikolov
I dreamed of coming to the United States for most of my younger years. You can only imagine the pain that grew in the middle of my chest when I came into the US, and after a while realized that my dream-country is getting sicker and sicker every day…
I felt incredibly small and insignificant to be able to change things… to do something about it.
Every day I was thinking: “How could that be? The most technologically-advanced country in the world, with citizens, who are utterly ignorant about their health, citizens who have voluntarily adopted self-destructive habits. ”
The picture is grim:
<> 74 percent of US adults are overweight - that's 3 out of 4, 31 percent of adults are obese - 1 in every 3
<> It is estimated that close to 25 percent of children and teenagers are either overweight or obese. In 2008 19.6% of children are obese - 1 of 5 kids
Obesity brings heart disease, stroke, diabetes and ultimately premature, slow and often painful death. We know already that our average lifespan is decreasing..
Scientists tell us that with preventive medicine and a healthy lifestyle, by going back to basics in our eating habits - they way we were more than 10,000 years ago - there shouldn’t be a reason why we wouldn’t be able to routinely live to 120-130 years of age.
But, no, we die early from the disease of the affluent, contemporary man.
And, what are the major causes of obesity? Here is my most concise list:
1. Eating a diet that’s excessively high carbohydrates
2. Drinking calories: the average daily consumption of sugar is 18 teaspoons or almost 16 percent of total calorie intake
3. Eating for pleasure, as a part of social life, or out of boredom, or anxiety, or depression
4. Lack of physical activity (this is easy to take care of, no?)
And the most shocking fact is this: it is possible and attainable to prevent and reverse obesity. All we need to do is ask one simple question.
Every time we are about to eat something, we need to ask this: “If I lived 10,000 years ago, would this have been available to me?”. If the answer is “No”, then don’t eat it!
Here is an example:
If you are holding an apple in your hand, and ask the question: “If I lived 10,000 years ago, would this apple have been available to me?”. The answer obviously is “Yes”. So, have the apple.
But, if on the other hand, you are holding a doughnut and you ask the same question, the answer will be “No”. So, what do you do? You put the doughnut away.
And, if you ask why 10,000 years, and not 3,000 or 5,000, there is a specific reason. Ten thousand years ago we still were hunter-gatherers. We subsided on fruits, vegetables, roots, nuts, and seeds, meat and seafood. Basically, whatever we could find, dig out, or kill (before it killed us).
About 7,000 years ago we discovered grains, and became… agrarians. This is when our collective health started deteriorating.
Why? Because, we aren’t genetically built to process large quantities of carbohydrates – the way the come from grains. It’s simply not in our genes, and if we were to adapt, it will take tens or may be even hundreds of thousands of ears.. if we survive as a species.
But, enough with the lecturing. I want to do something different today. I ask you to join me in my mission to save My Dream-country!
I want us ALL to join forces and promise, starting TODAY, to make a conscious effort to live a healthier life by asking ourselves this one question every time we are about to put something in our bodies: “If I lived 10,000 years ago, would this have been available to me?” That’s it.
And, if you are one of these people who thinks that it’s too late for you to make a changes, please, I beg you to at least do anything you can to prevent your kids or grand-kids from becoming overweight and obese early in life. They can’t make educated choices, and… they are not the ones, who do the groceries.
We MUST do everything we can to begin improving our health as individuals and collectively. Let’s start today with ourselves. And let’s protect our children! After all they are the future!
Are you with me?