I´m not an easy person to shock but yesterday I found myself staring into thin air with my mouth open for several minutes. The book Maggie goes on a diet (yes, it´s a real book, a children´s book! Age range; 6-12) is about 14 year old Maggie who is overweight and for that reason bullied in school. So she goes on a diet and starts exercising, becomes thin and therefor, of course, popular and happy. Some quotes from the book:
“Losing the weight was not only good for Maggie’s health, Maggie was so much happier and was also very proud of herself.”
“More and more people were beginning to know Maggie by name. Playing soccer gave Maggie popularity and fame.”
I´m aware of the fact that obesity is a problem in society, not only among grown ups but also children. And it´s important to educate these people on nutrition and make them want to choose a healthier more active life style. However that responsibility should never be put on a child. It´s the parents that need to be educated on what they do to their children (and themselves) by stuffing them with sugary starchy food every day, not only obesity but type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, etc.
The word diet makes me cringe, it´s something our mothers did in the 80´s, the era of the low fat (high carb) products. To me it means starving yourself for a certain amount of time to loose weight, and then get back to eating “normally” again, usually resulting in gaining all the weight back, just to go on a another diet to loose it all again. Don´t even get me started on soulless cults like Weight Watchers and Cambridge, making money out of selling their sugary starchy products, feeding their customers sugar addiction, just to make sure that they will keep coming back, after they fall off the starvation wagon. But no, Weight Watchers is great, it works every time! Really, every time huh?
Sugar and starvation is a lethal combination, you´re set to fail from the very first day. Bouncing blood sugar levels, lack of energy, the endorphin/serotonin receptors in your brain screaming for their next sugar fix. It´s only a matter of time before you cave.
Choosing a healthy life style is not about denying yourself what you like, it´s about learning what eating crap does to your body, and there for willingly choosing a healthier option. Unfortunately sugar is a powerful demon and not a lot of people are willing to give it up. Believe me, I know, I have fallen off my carb free wagon a number of times (my love of bread and chocolate is borderline sickly), but in the end I have to compare how my body responds to eating carbs as opposed to not eating them which makes it easier and easier to choose to not go down that road today. Now I know not everybody out there has this problem with sugar, there´s a lot of people out there who can eat carbohydrates every day with being triggered into over eating, I´m not writing this for them, I´m writing for the people who has a sugar sensitivity/addiction and treats food like a drug. I can promise you the majority of the obese people out there has this chemical imbalance in their brain, it´s not lack of character as a lot of the non-sugar-sensitive people enjoys calling it. People are different, just like some people can drink alcohol without becoming addicted while others can not. For a quick and simple lesson in the bio-chemistry of your brain; click here.
Ok so this turned into a lot of sugar is the devil propaganda. But I do think it´s an important issue, and it makes me sad to see people mistreat their bodies in such terrible ways, especially when it also affects their children.
For more info check out my Nutrition page for some videos from one of my favorite movies Fat Head.
And for those of you out there who are struggling with a sugar addiction and would like help, this is another good website, Radiant Recovery.
The girl with the net and the tulle 