What is Your Fat Burning Ability? Click Here To Take the test now!

Never Be a Victim of Another Weight Loss Scam

By Erik Kampe, M.S.

Diet and Nutrition why the confussion?

History tell us that there are many ways to optimal health and nutritional balance. Understanding the common factors of health regardless if you are a vegetarian or meat-eater are discussed in this article.

Principles of Alkalinity (the pH level of your blood) and Hormonal balance are identified as the best guides for helping us make food choices.

What are the factors of health and wellness?

If age and longevity are used as a measure of health and wellness, it may be useful to look at who they are.

Wayne Pickering, a nutritionist & health expert, reports that after traveling through 23 countries and meeting people who have reach 90 years and upward there have been 9 common factors of diet and nutrition:

1. Plenty of fresh air
2. Pure drinking water
3. Ample sunshine
4. Adequate rest
5. A fitness program for the heart and skeletal muscles
6. Emotional stability
7. A diet of natural foods
8. A positive attitude
9. A reverence for a higher power

It is important to emphasize that these individuals all varied in what they ate. For example, the following labels could describe them:

• Vegetarians
• Fruitarians
• Raw food eaters
• Fish eaters
• Meat eaters

Despite these differences, their diet and nutrition strategies were similar in 5 specific ways:

1. Foods were eaten in moderation
2. Foods eaten were appropriate for the energy expended in the type of work the individual did
3. The foods eaten were native to the environment
4. They were foods to which the individual were biologically adapted (infractions of this rule were minor)
5. Foods were eaten in compatible combinations

From the above, a framework for health and wellness can be established around a lifestyle that is continuously balanced and managed by a heightened awareness about the things that you can control through choice (i.e. our daily practices of fitness, diet and nutrition).

The purpose of this article is to establish two foundational principles of health and wellness based on moderation and balance:

• Hormonal Balance

• Acid /Alkaline Balance

These should be the goals of any diet and nutrition strategy. That is why a program like Diet.com is so powerful.

What We All Have in Common

Different people will respond differently to the same foods - there is no one perfect diet for everyone - any claims to this end should be suspect.

For example, some people digest animal protein without a problem while others cannot (i.e. can only digest plant protein).

However, the human body processes are species specific.

Although people differ in food preferences, all human bodies will aspire to have a similar optimized health state that can be characterized by a stable blood sugar level and a specific acid/alkaline balance.

Perhaps it is semantics, but a discussion on diet choices seems inappropriate considering the connotations that the word ‘diet’ may produce.

For example, the word diet may be associated with the notion of short term eating regimes that promote starvation and denial. Hence, rather than speak of diets, it may be beneficial to refer to eating guidelines as nutritional strategies that promote choices.

This shift of focus is important in the way we think about food.

By developing a basic understanding of how the body works we can implement diet and nutritional strategies that work for us.

Opps did I just say diet again!

Where to Start to Find Balance

Start with fundamental principles.

The principles of hormonal balance & acid/alkalinity balance are the foundations of creating a life long strategy for health and wellness.

They also represented the two ideas that almost every health expert will agree upon.

These principles should guide your decision making process - when you:

• Think

• Train

• Eat

You will always be affecting the balance of one or both of these principles on any diet and nutrition plan.

I know it may sound funny when I talk about "thinking", but "thinking" does have a influence on the chemical soup of hormones and neural transmitters.

Every elite athlete and health expert knows the importance and influence of the mind over the body.

Everything starts with how you think about an event.

Remember, a diet and nutrition strategy must correspond to a fitness strategy; otherwise what you have is a form of a ‘crash diet’ (i.e. a short term strategy).

Science is clear on this point, quality of life is the ability to stabilize our metabolism through "diet and nutrition" and exercise - each represents one side of the coin of health.

Principle #1 - HORMONAL Balance

This is a way to describe how proper food in-take and exercise can maintain a balanced and stable hormonal response (i.e. constant blood sugar level).

In other words, it is the ability to eat the right combinations, a balanced matrix of carbohydrates, proteins and fats.

It is the foundation of any diet and nutrition strategy.

In the orginal fat-burning book, Slow Burn, Stu Mittleman approaches this by advocating a diet and nutrition strategy that balances the intake of carbohydrates, proteins and fats that promote the body’s use of fat as the primary source of energy.

The goal is to minimize:

• The insulin-response that creates wide fluctuations in blood sugar levels

• The starvation response (triggered after 5 hrs of not eating) that promotes sugar burning and fat storage

By blending a matrix of food types, and consistently eating small meals 4-5 times a day you can stabilize blood sugars and negate the starvation response, respectively.

In essence what you are doing with a hormonal diet and nutrition approach is beginning to prepare the body to burn fat rather than sugar through balance and moderation.

Principle #2 - ACID /ALKALINE BALANCE

All solutions in nature are either acidic (ph <7) or alkaline (ph>7).

For optimal health our bodies maintain an alkaline state, between 7.35 and 7.45. The factors that affect our bodies pH include how we eat, train and think.

• Diet and Nutrition Once each meal is eaten and digested, your body will retain an ash (digested food) that it is transported and used by the body cells to maintain good health. The ash retained will either be acid or alkaline depending on the food you ate. This explains some confusion around lemons as being a great alkaline food. Lemons, which are naturally acidic, become alkaline when digested. It is important that a proper balance of ash, 80% alkaline and 20% acid be maintained for optimal health. Some health experts suggest 75-20 is sufficient as well.

• Exercise /Movement Slow aerobic (with oxygen) training promotes an alkalinity state. Conversely, anaerobic (without oxygen) promotes an acidic state.

• Emotions & Other Factors Rest, sleep, fresh air, pleasure, laughter and love all promote alkalinity. Conversely, worry, anger, selfishness and hate are acidifiers.

SUMMARY

If you go back to the common factors to health and wellness that were listed in the introduction to this article, you will notice that all factors are covered with the principles of hormonal eating and acid/alkaline balance.

The ability to moderate and balance is the key in developing a lifestyle change that optimizes our body, mind and spirit connection!

Make friends with Diet and Nutrition work learn to work with it rather than against it!

Getting the right Diet and Nutrition by listening to you body is the key to you living a life of optimal health and wellness.

RECOMMENDED Web-articles

1. Metabolic Typing is the science of discovering the fundamental way in which your body produces energy from your food, in other words, the explanation of why "one person's medicine is another’s poison."
   
   Click to read more: Food & Metabolism
   
   
   
2. Many healers are concerned with the level of acidity or alkalinity of the body, from orthodox medical doctors to alternative practitioners like cancer doctor Emanuel Revici, controversial test developer Dr. Carey Reams or the sleeping prophet Edgar Cayce. When these different healers speak about acid-alkaline balance in the body, what do they mean?
   
   Why is this important?
   
   And how do nutrition and lifestyle affect acid/alkaline balance?
   
   Our purpose here is to explore this topic and to answer some of these questions, particularly as it relates to the research of Dr. Weston Price.
   
   Click to read more: Nutritional Balance