New Year - New Start

We are all, including you, dieting. In fact, you’ve very likely been on an unnatural diet since the day you were born – without realizing it.

I am defining the word “diet” as “the food naturally consumed by an individual or a population.” The food you’ve been consuming isn’t natural. It bears little resemblance to the native diet our ancestors enjoyed for hundreds of thousands of years. Deviating from your natural eating pattern is “dieting”.

This change in your food put you on a risky “diet” with dangerous consequences. The regular intake of these artificial foods has caused a constellation of modern diseases together representing the biggest epidemic the world has ever seen.

You may not associate yourself with cavemen, but your genetic make up is 99.99% identical to your early ancestors and your body still reacts in the same way theirs did despite the complete change in our environment.

In evolutionary terms, the appearance of processed foods happened in the blink of an eye. Your body simply isn’t designed to handle them. For instance, the diet of early man was naturally low glycemic. But today, the foods we regularly consume cause huge spikes in blood sugar (along with the inevitable drop), which puts your body in a constant state of stress.

Diabetes has become epidemic. In the last 20 years, the number of worldwide cases has risen from 30 million to 230 million. By 2025, that number is expected to reach 350 million. Diabetes is often a stepping stone to other chronic diseases like high blood pressure, cancer and heart disease. I keep learning of family and friends being diagnosed with these diseases, and I keep asking myself “why”.

The point that you’ve been dieting since birth is the main idea that we need to understand. I’ve realized that the path to a lean, fat-free and disease-free body is NOT to go on another of the hundreds of diets that others have advocated.

The key is to stop dieting all together. You must eliminate the rogue foods that have invaded your daily eating habits and simply return to your native diet.

But there’s the rub. We’ve lost sight of what our natural diet is. We need to learn what that diet is so we can stop “dieting”. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to follow. It doesn’t require a lot of sacrifice. And you’ll be relieved to find out that you don’t have to give up a lot of the foods you really love.

As you’re celebrating the New Year, don’t waste your time with sacrificing resolutions. Instead, allow yourself to return to a natural way of eating. And enjoy a healthy and sustainable way of getting exactly what your body needs.