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Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Health by absence or presence?

Is the food you eat healthy because of what it has or because of what it doesn’t? Some of the most famous diets have advertised being “low fat” or more recently “low carb”. Health by absence in these cases suggests that carbs or fat are bad, and that food that doesn’t have these nutrients is by default healthy
Likewise, when you think about your own health level, do you measure it by the problems you don’t have or by the ability to enjoy all that life has to offer you? Which type of health do you think is more valuable?

When the people from “The Secret” were on Oprah, one of the women said something that struck me. If you’re focused on losing weight you never will (consistently) but if you focus instead on being whole and healthy that that will lead you to where you want to be.
The law of attraction determines what type of choices and decisions we make, based on our thoughts and beliefs. So when your focus is on losing weight, you search out foods (often boxed and processed) that claim to be low in levels of sugar, fat, salt, and carbs.
While these foods may be low in certain nutrients, they are often heavily processed & preserved. As well, people will often eat more than one serving since the food often has higher levels of some other ingredient to make up for unnatural levels of something else.

If instead the focus is on becoming whole and healthy, foods that are boxed, canned, processed and which contain added sugar, fat, and salt are generally avoided or removed entirely from the diet. Whole food fills us up faster, as it doesn’t overwhelm our natural level of hunger and feelings of fullness. As a result we naturally eat less and often avoid the negative effects that junk food (synthetic food) can have on our metabolisms.

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